Thanksgiving has passed and the Christmas season has begun, notwithstanding the fact that stores have been selling Christmas merchandise ad nauseum since September. In our house, the season begins the day after the turkey has been devoured and the offspring have returned to their own homes, not to be heard from until there are gifts under the tree.
For a period of time when I was young, we lived in the city. Two weeks before Christmas, our little family, Mom, Dad and me, would venture out to find the perfect tree to be found in a forest of pines that magically appeared on the parking lot of the nearby elementary school. The proceeds from the purchase of these trees would help fund various school activities like holiday parties which, no doubt, is no longer allowed. But I digress.
The process was like buying a car, except it was usually at night, and since it was before global warming, it was invariably freezing cold and snowing. Dad would pick out a tree, and the sales guy would hold it up for my mother to examine. He’d turn it around and around, tapping it on the pavement to make sure no needles would fall off to ensure it was fresh, which of course it was not since it was cut in Canada back in October.
This melodrama would be repeated three or four times until Mom was satisfied … or not. Finally, she gave her seal of approval, and the haggling began. Prices would be bandied about until the end of this dance when Dad would always pay the original price. Grumbling all the way home that the $5 he paid was too high. “It was for a good cause,” Mom would remind him.
Year after year at tree-buying time, Dad would grumble about the rising costs of Christmas trees. That issue would be resolved by our move to Mattapoisett by cutting a tree ourselves in the woods behind my Grandmother’s house on Cathaway Lane. This way he knew it would be fresh and free.
With Dad’s trusty crosscut saw, we would search for just the right evergreen, drag it back to his old Studebaker, tie it on the roof and bring it home for Mom’s certain approval. More often than not there would be bare spots on the tree. Dad would drill holes in the trunk and, using branches cut off from the bottom, fill in the spaces. This would eventually meet Mom’s approval, and all would be right in our world.
After my marriage, we went back to buying perfectly shaped trees off the lot … no traipsing through the woods for me … until the cost reached $40 or $50, then we decided to buy an artificial tree … for $150! “But it will last for years,” my wife said.
Setting up the tree waits for a week or so after Thanksgiving. When we finally got it down from the attic after retrieving the missus’ enormous collection of nutcrackers, we discovered it was old and worn out … as are we. The three hours it took unpacking it from its gigantic storage bag, which barely fit through the attic door, placing the branches one at a time into the trunk and hanging the lights, most of which were burnt out, was exhausting. Time for a new fake tree.
After much research and debate we chose a hi-tech, realistic-looking, plastic balsam beauty. Just step on a pedal on the base and the tree flips over to form a perfectly shaped, fully-lit masterpiece of make-believe.
The lights can change from white to red and green, twinkling or not, at the touch of a button on a remote control. No more three hours of manual labor. No more trips to the attic … it fits in the hall closet. Just a pleasant afternoon sitting by the fire, watching my bride hang all the family heirloom ornaments. And all for the price of … er, well let’s not talk about that.
Merry Christmas!
Editor’s note: Mattapoisett resident Dick Morgado is an artist and retired newspaper columnist whose musings are, after some years, back in The Wanderer under the subtitle “Thoughts on ….” Morgado’s opinions have also appeared for many years in daily newspapers around Boston.
Thoughts on …
By Dick Morgado
This is written by my cousin.