“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