A Twenty First Century Christmas

I was not born in a log cabin. I was not born poor and I’ve never lived on a farm, or in the country. No one named Sven or Ole ever delivered the mail to my childhood home by horseback. I walked a block and a half to school and I never had to do it through seven feet of snow.

My father, although a professor, was not absent minded. I never had to search the neighborhood for him, because he got so wrapped up in thought, he didn’t pay attention to where he was. He never railed for or against society. And he never made me move to South America to run an ice making machine for the natives.

My mother acted in Community Theater but she never became famous. So she was never tempted to beat me with wire hangers.

I never knew my grandmothers well. My grandfathers died before I was born. I never had an aunt greet me at the door for a Thanksgiving visit, by pinching my cheek and saying, “My, how much you’ve grown.”

My childhood pets were precious to me, but, well, never warned me that Timmy had fallen down the well. And my best friend moved away in the sixth grade, before we could get into any really good trouble. I never had a favorite sled. Besides, the local sledding hill was only thirty feet long.

So where am I, a budding author, to get ideas for a Christmas story that can be treasured for generations to come?

I started out by jotting a few notes about my family’s warm holiday traditions. But I quickly realized that our customary Christmas Eve dinner of clam chowder was not exactly a national tradition. Then I remembered that my parents drove us children around all Christmas Eve looking at decorative lighting displays. But I soon had the thought that it wasn’t because it was a jolly time for all, but rather that we kids would be exhausted and wouldn’t try to stay awake f or Santa’s arrival.

I have one great sin, the biggest sin an author could have. I was born in the latter part of the Twentieth Century. In fact, worse than that, I was born after nineteen sixty. I don’t remember, first hand, news about the Kennedy’s, Martin Luther King, or the hippies. I didn’t even start high school until nineteen seventy-five. I can’t imagine anyone being nostalgic about the “Me Generation”, or how about disco?

My father had terrific memories of holidays on the family farm, in the mountains of Oregon. Sleigh rides, cutting your own Christmas trees, and the aroma of baked goods, cooked from scratch on a potbelly stove.

Where are my memories? My warm, cheery, eggnog soaked, holiday memories. Where are my Childhood memories that will be with me for all time, to be passed onto my grandchildren? Well, maybe there was one.

The holiday season I was eight; my father decided it was high time we had a traditional Christmas. We skipped the clam chowder and my Mom prepared a succulent Christmas goose. Twinkling lights, strings of popcorn, and potpourri burning in it’s pot made the house into a tantalizing, sensuous, Christmas palace. We went door to door singing carols, my father helped my siblings and me make an old time snow fort in the back yard. We dug out my grandparents’ real wool, hand knitted, Christmas stockings that had been stitched in 1902. On Christmas morning my Mom and Dad took turns half reading, half acting out, stories from the Bible.

And, we cut our own Christmas tree.

It was pitch black. I’d been curled up in a ball, waiting for so long my muscles were aching. I’d needed to go to the bathroom for hours, but I hadn’t dared move. I feared that if Dad heard me walking around, he’d change his mind and wouldn’t drive the family into the country to cut down our own tree. “Have to get up at the crack of dawn,” Dad had said, “the country’s not close by anymore!”

The Country. I imagined it as a thousand miles away. A place we would have to take a spectacular rocket car to get to in one day. My parents had the peculiar habit of telling me exciting things, seemingly eons ahead of time. Then I’d have to wait and wait and anxiously wait for that event to finally arrive. (Punishments on the other hand they sprung on me with cat-like swiftness.)

But on that morning, I was waiting. My Dad had made the family wait until the day before Christmas to head out for our tree expedition. “It’s tradition!” Now it was almost morning, it was dark, but I could tell morning would be just another tick of the clock.

A crack of light tentatively edged onto the floor of my bedroom. Was I dreaming or was it time to go? A lurking black creature, arms outstretched, slid across the floor towards my head. I drew my trusty sword Ringo, and slashed at the creature in warning. It dissolved into a small but vicious, fire-breathing dragon. I was too scared to move.

It lunged and blew a foul burst of flaming breath at me. I closed my eyes. I felt a warm breeze tussle my hair. I looked around and the pine trees were everywhere. Which one would we choose? There were acres and acres of perfect trees. Every one was caressed with a beckoning sparkle from the morning frost. The grass was soft, and plush, and green, growing all around. Several of the trees were already festooned with decorations. But I wanted one that we could decorate ourselves. I couldn’t contain myself. I threw my arms around my father who suddenly looked more like Mayor Daley. I thanked him and said, “I Love you, I love you.”

“Brian. Brian, wake up. It’s time to go.” My Dad said

“Hrmm? Whasfuffus? It’s… time to…” I said.

“We have to get an early start, time to get up.”

My mind suddenly shifted into consciousness. My father was standing above me, but he looked like my Dad, not like the mayor. I looked out the window and a few strands of daylight were peaking through. It was time to go! Finally, after weeks of waiting, it was time to go cut the tree. I was so relieved that I rolled over and went back to sleep. It only took my father four tries to get me out of bed. I don’t remember getting dressed. All I recall is peering up over my scarf and out the car window as the city fell behind us, and fields appeared, as we drove into the country.

I was the first one out of the car. The snow was perfect. I’d hit my sister with a snowball even before she had a chance to get out of the car. Dad scowled and was about to say something when my older brother hit him in the back with a snowball. I expected Dad to pile us back in the car, lecturing us on the dangers of snowballs all the way home. Instead, a mischievous grin turned up the sides of his lips as he took two giant steps, scooped me up and used me to pin my brother into a snow bank. My sister rushed over and tried to bury us all with snow. I slouched my stocking cap away from my eyes and looked at the car.

My mom was still in the front seat. I couldn’t hear her but I could see her laughing, trying to catch her breath. She locked all the doors and held up her hands in mock horror as we all tiptoed toward the car, snowballs in hand. We gave the car a good pummeling. Our snowballs thumped against the windshield, bits of snow spinning off the glass. My Dad cleared a circle in the middle of the snow-covered windshield and peered in. He fell back a step, his face ashen. He slapped his forehead. (My Dad could have been an actor). I was stone still. He swept his gaze past the three of us and said, “She’s gone!”

Frantically I helped the others clear away the snow. It was true my Mom had vanished. I leaned in a little closer to see past the reflections on the windshield when my Mom popped up shouting a loud “BOO!” The three of us children staggered back and fell into the snow, laughing. My father helped Mom out of the car and enveloped her in a big hug.

I’ve missed that mischievous smile I saw on my Dad that day. I never saw it during every day city life.

Mr. Peterson was the man who greeted us at the gate of the tree farm. He must have grown up in the Arctic. I doubt that anyone could have had that ruddy and creased a face growing up anywhere else. He proclaimed in a heavy Norwegian accent that he was the proud owner and had worked there for forty years. He should have had a beard. He looked like a lumberjack. And he looked like he should have retired forty years ago.

Mr. Peterson guided us through the small forest of pine trees while I stopped at each one sizing up what it would look like in our living room. I liked the bushy, long needled kind. I had seen a light green, sparsely branched Scotch Pine at a friend’s house a couple of years earlier. I hated it. It looked barren. There was so much space between the ornaments you could see the wall behind the tree. My friend had a German family. I wanted a luxurious, full-bodied, American kind of tree!

Suddenly I noticed something was different. I stopped and tried to focus my hearing. But there was nothing to hear. There was no crunching of footsteps ahead of me. There was no conversation echoing through the forest. I had fallen back a bit and now I couldn’t see my family. I couldn’t even hear Mr. Peterson’s loud raspy voice. I wavered for a moment in my tracks, straining to hear. There was a chirp from a bird, but the snow and the trees muffled the sound and made it seem a hundred miles away. Cautiously I took a step. The crunch under my foot struggled up to my ears but then dissipated into the still air. I couldn’t stand the silence any longer. In the city there is always noise of some sort, but now there was a void that I wanted filled. I ran around a huge tree and slid to a stop.

My Dad was silhouetted against a tree, his hand on his chin, staring at the tree in front of him. His boots were buried in the snow. He looked like a fence pole sticking out of the ground. Mr. Peterson was off to one side. My Mom was behind Dad, her hands in her pockets. She was also staring at the tree. My brother and sister were staring at Dad. All was quiet. I was convinced that they would never move again. It was as if the forest sprites had sprinkled magic dust on them to make them ice statues.

“This is it. This is our Holiday tree.” My Father boomed in a merry voice. The family rushed toward him and converged in a chorus of cheers. I recall joining hands and dancing a jig around my father, or perhaps we didn’t, and I’ve just seen that in a movie somewhere.

Mr. Peterson sauntered over and looked up at the tree. “Ah-yup, that tree is O.K., it’ll probably do your family just fine.” It was the tree that I had envisioned, full and deep green.

It was tall, taller even than my father. And it had the perfect spike on top where we could place our star. My father shook the snow off the branches and the tree perked up and waved to us. Like a stray kitten, it had found its home.

My Mom, my imaginative, but eminently practical Mom, kneeled down at the base of the tree. “Rather a thick trunk though.” She said, and looked up at Dad.

“Never fear. My saw is near.” My Dad said, and jaunted off double time in the direction of the car. Mr. Peterson opened his mouth to speak, but Dad was gone.

My Dad had been a boy scout. I knew he’d be prepared. I guess we had distracted him with the snowball fight. I imagined cutting the tree down by hand was going to be the most exciting part. I was going to pretend that I was George Washington, cutting down the cherry tree.

I bided my time by making an angel in the snow. My sister bet me she could make a better angel, so we raced, flailing snow in all directions, trying to make the quintessential angel. My brother did his part by filling in the angels as soon as we were done.

There was an unnatural sound behind me that produced a dissonance with nature. It didn’t last long, and so at first I thought it had happened in my mind. I struggled to get out of the latest angel hole I had dug myself into. It was a deep hole. I couldn’t get a handle on anything to pull myself out. Finally I had to roll over destroying the right edge of my snow sculpture. My hands slipped as I rolled and I ended up with my face pressed into the cold, wet, ice. I stood up, and seemingly in a slow motion dream world, I turned to face the spot the noise had come from. The tree, our tree, lay dying on its side, bleeding sap from its now severed trunk. Mr. Peterson was standing above it, wondering at the glory of his job, chain saw in hand.

It was cold. The snow on my clothes had melted and was soaking down to my skin. My eyelids were freezing shut. Why had we walked so far from the warmth of the car? It took years to get back to the parking lot. Mom and Dad struggled with the carcass of the Christmas tree. Mr. Peterson had received his forty pieces of silver and had abandoned us without offering to help.

I enjoy indoor plumbing, central heating, Jacuzzis and the like. But once a year, around Christmas, I wish I had been born a long, long, time ago. I wish I had lived before the invention of chain saws, before tree farms, before the onset of Christmas tree lots, before shopping malls.

I wish I had lived at a time when I could walk out into my own back forty, and cut down my own Christmas tree.