“0 Christmas tree, 0 Christmas tree, How lovely are your branches “0 Christmas tree, O Christmas tree, You seem to have run rampant ” (With apologies to the com poser of the old holiday classic) Our tree went up in good time this year Once I rearranged the house. Christmas isn’t Christmas for me without a tree It was so when I was a little kid and is still so now as a considerably older “kid.” With Christmas on the hori zon, we would begin pestering Daddy to bring home a tree. And, one evening as the big hoi iday was about a week away, usually within a week or so, a Scotch pine would come lumber ing through the door, with Daddy prope"ing its direction from somewhere among the branches. Immediately the holi day perfume of fresh pine filled the living room. For us, the Christmas season had officially begun Sometimes the pine went right back out for a meeting with the saw and a lopping off of some length of trunk This was. necessary to assure the tree would stand upright without developing a permanent crick in its tip Sometimes we had to jockey the tree around a bit to hide an uneven or less-full side After setting it in a tree stand and our debates about the best side Dad would string on the lights (which were inevitably somewhat tangled and need a bulb replaced) and leave the rest to Mom and us kids And they always became beautiful trees In the early years of our mar riage, The Farmer hauled home the tree, first from a neighbor^ who sold them, later cut from our own small planting of pines in a corner of the farm inaccessi ble for field cropping As they grew, our kids became the tree selectors, picking out a “weed” cedar each December from those that grew in other small, untill able corners and banks on the farm Some were too big, some too little, some had “holes” in their appearance One year, we actu ally fastened in a branch into a tree to fill a gap There were some trees as wide as they were tall, including one year’s dubbed the “Christmas bush ” But all accepted our humble strings of lights, homemade decorations, and the inevitable collection of assortedj and prized, cow orna ments. Lancaster Farming, Saturday, December 19, 1998-B1 And, in the end, they were all beautiful Christmas trees With the kids grown and our lives hectic with cows and crops, I actually debated a few years ago doing what I had once con sidered an act of holiday trea son buying an artificial tree Instead, when a local dis count store advertised a sale of potted, Norfolk Island pines, I picked out the nicest, 30-inch one I could find and plunked dow a few bucks lor a “real" Christmas tree While small, it was still pretty with red bows and a few of the favorites from our cow ornament collection “Boy, has that tree grown,” observed The Farmer as he edged around our homegrown Christmas tree last week It no longer fits in its prior location; I had to move the rocking chair out of the living room to make a space for it The potted pine stands near ly six feet tall and about four feet at its widest branching, having shot up and out the last two years like a teenagod boy hitting puberty The only special care it gets, is an occasional move to a larger container and periodic feedings ol pure all organic, diluted manure “tea ' It summers on the basement porch, winters in the greenhouse and now has adequate br am lies for the cow ornaments, plus lots of others A string of tmv, white lights added last year onh cov ers half the tree’s height this year It’s not a shapely Frasiei fir, or a classic Scotch pine or a fra grant, long-needled white pine, but, like all Christmas trees, it’s special in its own way Christmas trees are symbols of the love of the season That makes them all beautiful Enjoy yours To you and yours. from The Farmer and I, a blessed, peace ful and safe holiday season
Significant historical Pennsylvania newspapers