notes--musical and otherwise: Christmas Tree Chopping

Christmas tree shopping is one of my favorite parts of the season. It’s something of a kickoff for the holidays and a fun family adventure. The past few years, however, have been less of a walk down Memory Lane in a Winter Wonderland. No simple shopping trip for the Stiths. None of the wandering excitedly through the tree lot, smelling the wonderful Frasier fir smell and judging height and fullness—we’ve done it enough times already. We picked our tree(s) out of the yard and chopped it down then and there. Not that the experience was traditional; even the Stith’s clichés tend towards the unorthodox.
All of us traipsed down across our muddy driveway in the damp drizzle to take a look at the Virginia pines that line the edges of our saturated soccer field. Each twisted, short, blue-green needle had a bead of water that glinted silver under the gray sky—ready to fall off en mass to drench any curious tree hunter armed with murderous intentions and a saw. The growth pattern of Virginia pines in their natural habitat is anything but regular, unfortunately, and we found ourselves faced with the disappointment trees that looked full and beautiful in the pine grove and lopsidedly scrawny out of context.
We compensated by choosing a few young trees with the intention of somehow tying them together. Rather than pulling them home on a sled over lovely fields of snow, the boys picked them up like battering rams and charged towards the house over the mud puddles in our sloppy yard.

Next followed our yearly hunt for the tree stand. This is one tradition that we are perfectly consistent in our observance of—somehow the rickety, many-times-repaired, fourlegged red and green apparatus always disappears into the great unknown of the basement storage and turns up in some dusty, unexpected corner. My mother is the only one who ever seems to be able to find it…she says it’s one of those special gifts that come with being a mom, like having an uncanny ability to know what's going on behind your back and knowing how to make the best hot chocolate around.
Our lovely Moravian star gave a bit of unforeseen trouble. We’d carelessly replaced the light bulb last year, partially melted our tree topper and nearly burned the house down. I’d forgotten all about this incident—fire safety in our house tends to center on controlling flying sparks from the wood stove and keeping Tiffany away from candles and matches. While I repaired the yellowed (and, in some cases, blackened) points of the star and found a bulb with less pyromaniacal tendencies, Daddy and the boys pulled out their drills to try and screw our tree trinity together. Currently, it’s wired to the wall to keep if from falling on anyone, which would be nothing short of a catastrophe…because that triple tree is tall. I’m guessing fourteen feet. The vaulted ceiling in the living room offered little restriction, so we went for dramatic. I had thought we’d made a rather conservative choice, but everything always looks smaller when it’s outside. Every time I walk into the living room, I feel like I ought to throw my ballet slipper at the Mouse King and dance off with the Nutcracker through swirling snowflakes.

Decorating it proved to be another challenge. Many of our Christmas parties over the years have included some element of ornament making. It’s truly amazing what people will come up with, given pipe cleaners, styrofoam balls, felt, and sequins. Actually, some of them are quite lovely, but some of them are more than a little ridiculous. There’s the Peace Tank, Michael Jordan (complete with pinhead eyeballs and festive green hairdo), the NY Yankees (made by a Yankee friend and always relegated to the place of shame in the back of the tree), Mr. Heat Miser and Mr. Snow Miser (if you don’t know, don’t ask), the Roofcrafters Snowman (complete with caulk gun and tool belt), the Christmas Tree Eyeballs (my favorites), and many, many others. None of your tinsel and popcorn strings; I get to put up the helicopter this year! Factor in the rickety ornament hook attachments and the height of our tree, and you got quite an adventure on your hands. We used ladders and broom handles, but even so occasionally had to resort to the most exciting ornament hanging technique of all: toss and cross your fingers. Fortunately styrofoam and felt don’t shatter (usually) when they hit the floor from fifteen feet.