Kissing Trees

It’s the summer of 2023 and I find myself writing a Christmas story. Why I do not know, but I swear on my mother-in-laws grave that it is all true.

While in grad school there was little money for anything including Christmas. Judy and I would earn a little extra money by ringing the bell for the Salvation Army. In those days you could get a permit from the Forest Service to cut your own tree in specified areas.  The cost was a dollar and a bit of gas, which was within our budget. I know what many of you are thinking.

“How wonderful! A family hike in a beautiful Oregon forest. What a memory to share with your wife and kids!”

BULLSHIT!!! Ok, the forest is beautiful, but then you have to get out of the car and hike in the mud and rain and cold for hours to find the “perfect” tree. You-cut Forest Service Christmas trees were not exactly prime grade. They are skinny and lop sided. They look nothing like the ones in a tree lot. After a couple of hours, being soaking wet with a 3-year-old Wes crying to go home, Judy finally gives up on perfection and we cut down an 8-footer with a base too big to fit in the tree stand.

After about three weeks on display, the tree has dried to near spontaneous combustion status. This means that the day after Christmas it has to come down or it will kill us. On Christmas that year, Judy was ringing the bell with a bundled-up Wes outside of Payless in Corvallis. The store manager took a liking to her and especially to Wes who at that age was a blonde-haired, blue-eyed cutie.  The manager knew we did not have any money and set aside some toys for Wes that he sold to her at after Christmas prices.  He asked her if we had a Christmas tree to which she responded to him with our abbreviated you-cut tree story.  As the store was closing on Christmas eve, he told Judy to drive to the back of the store as he was going to have to throw out the unsold Christmas trees and she might as well have one for free. It was the prefect tree. Seven foot, perfectly symmetrical, bushy and flocked like it had been in new fallen snow.

We waited to put it up till after Wes went to sleep, quietly undecorating the fire hazard, then redecorating the perfect one. Then we put out Wes’s extra presents under it next to the home-made ones Judy had made for him.  We finished about 2 AM, exhausted but in the glow of the belief that this was going to be the best Christmas day Wes had ever had.  

Wes woke us up before dawn and asked us how the tree got white. Here is where we made out big mistake. We lied and told him that an angel had come in the middle of the night and kissed our tree. Being three he accepted this and soon forgot it. Little did we anticipate the horror to come.

Next year, similar Forest Service POS tree, with the same fate the day after Christmas day. Wes however soon changed our Christmases for decades to come. A few days before Christmas he stood in the middle of our living room, hands behind his back, looking at the bedraggled tree and said, “On Christmas day an angle will come and kiss our tree and turn it purrrrrr white” As he said this he looked to the heavens, rolled his head in a circle then nodded it twice with his eyes closed.

OMG!  That was a year ago! He never said a thing about last year’s miracle till two days before Christmas! What are we going to do? Admit we lied? Destroy a child’s belief in Christmas miracles?

Then we came up with a plan. Tree lot Christmas tree are dirt cheep on Christmas eve. We could afford to buy a flocking gun that would attach to blow hole of the vacuum cleaner. Wait till Wes was asleep, flock the lot tree, wait for it to dry then sneak it into the house and repeat what we did last Christmas.  

So, what if we finished at 4 AM and the flock was not dry when we began redecorating. Sure, I was covered in snow flock overspray and probably would die from white lung in my old age. The plan worked. It was not perfect, but it worked. And Wes would keep this stupid belief for another year.

Once started down this road, we continued to kiss the tree for the next 30 years. The absolute worst year for this was 1983. My mother-in-law and Judy were inside with their backs being caressed by the radiant heat of a wood stove. Meanwhile I on the was outside in our car port trying to hold on to the tree with one hand while trying to shake the fucking flocking bag with the other during a violent windstorm. Did I mention that it required two hands to shake the bag? That proper technique proved difficult when the tree kept blowing over into the muddy dirt in my unpaved carport. Finally, I gave up trying to keep the tree upright and just flocked with the tree laying in the mud while cursing my fate. I finally finished, covered with flock, cold, wet, and not looking forward to spending the rest of night redecorating.  Then my mother-in-law commented that she had not heard many angelic words from the angel that kissed the tree.  Somehow, she lived a long life afterwards. And I discovered that flock sticks to mud even better than to wet fir needles.   

And this hideous tradition continued up until the time that all four of my children left the nest. Even when they all knew of the lie, we had told Wes those many years before, they still wanted it. Although technology had now replaced the vacuum cleaner flocking gun nightmare and the older kids helped, it was still an all-night process.

There is an old joke about a Catholic priest, methodist minister, and rabbi debating when life begins. The priest was for the moment of conception, the minister was advocating for the moment of birth. The rabbi gave the best answer…”when the kids leave home, and the dog dies. “ I would have to add having to no longer kissing the fucking Christmas tree.