Christmas Trees

In the 1980s, Christmas trees were not especially easy to find. They had trees at the wood boat shop on Highway 50, and then some more trees a ways down that same road, near the cemetery. But we couldn’t go there because those trees were too expensive. The trees were from the north, maybe Canada, and they were pricey. Thirty-five dollars or more.  When my friends would put their Christmas trees up just after Thanksgiving we were not always so fortunate.  The trees were too expensive then, my dad knew that. Why buy a tree when they’re in demand when the real deal only comes to those who wait out mostly all of the season?

And so often we’d wait, wait for the prices to fall. Wait until November 1st to carve a pumpkin, wait till Thanksgiving morning to buy that turkey, and wait until Christmas was nearly here to buy that tree. The tree sellers would know, after the fifteenth of December, that the regular folks who valued trees and tradition would have already chopped, hauled, and decorated their trees. After the fifteenth, the trees must be discounted, because when the clock strikes midnight on Christmas Eve, those thirty-five dollar trees are nothing but firewood. But worse, they’re the sort of firewood that you have to haul away before burning.

Some years, we’d get that tree early. Twenty dollars for the six footer from the Boy Scouts, but rarely from them because that was retail and retail wasn’t our thing. Mostly we’d wait, and we’d wait, and when it was nearly Christmas we’d go get that tree. A thirty-five dollar tree for fifteen, now that’s the way to make a Christmas cheery and bright. Some years, a twenty-fiver for free. My mother would decorate the tree and my father would put his expensive German train around the base of his nearly free tree,  and my brothers and I would feel the relief of a Christmas saved.

This year, I bought my tree where I have for the past three. The tree farm down the road from my North Walworth house. This year, I drove my Gator into the field, surveyed the live inventory,  selected the finest Frasier Fir I could find, and unceremoniously sawed it down. My son and I loaded the tree into the undersized Gator bed, and drove it down the road, the top of the tree brushing against the pavement, the base of the tree narrowly missing the streetside mailboxes. $105.50 for that fine specimen, and just a week after Thanksgiving.