Christmas Trees I’ve Known

I’ve seen Christmas trees for as long as I can remember. My first recollection of Christmas trees and gifts was when I was between 3 and 4 years of age, sitting on the floor of a church looking at a tall, Christmas tree decorated with ornaments and lights while Santa distributed gifts.

My little sister, Adeline received doll dishes, I received a doll. I fervently believed Santa had made a mistake; Adeline should have gotten the doll, and I, the dishes. I knew how to have pretend tea parties, but Adeline did not because she was still a baby. I cried and whined for hours because my parents would not let me make the exchange.

When I was 5 years old, I counted down the days until Christmas and spent hours leafing thru the toy pages in the Sears catalog. I don’t remember a tree that year, but I remember the pretty butterfly on wheels my brother Mickey got. .

I was in the third grade when the family moved to Iowa Falls, Iowa. On Christmas Eve, Mom and Dad helped us hang our stockings and put out a plate of cookies for Santa, then it was off to bed. When we woke Christmas morning, there would be a magnificent tree, glowing with tinsel, ornaments and lights. Toys, wrapped and unwrapped were under the tree and each of our stockings was filled with Oranges, Brazil nuts, ribbon candy and English walnuts. I remember dessert being thin slices of fruit cake that had been made months before and ripened with Kentucky Bourbon.

When Adeline and I along with Mickey and Charles were a little older, we asked the folks to let us have the Christmas tree before Christmas. From that point on, we decorated a tree before December 25, sometimes a few days, sometimes a week before.

I loved the fragile ornaments. They were usually made in Germany and were not only colorful, but had lovely shapes. One rarely sees that kind today; most of the ornaments being plastic colored balls of varying sizes. There were times when we tried to make popcorn and cranberry strings for the tree, but the cranberries usually split and we could never make the popcorn strings long enough to please us. We often made paper chains, but we ALWAYS had ice cycle tinsel.

When I was 8 months pregnant, my husband sold Christmas trees in Redwood City. It was an adventure that happened on the spur of a moment when he read an ad in a newspaper about Oregon shipping Christmas trees to California for sale. With false bravado we gambled our savings of $200 and set up a lot on El Camino in Redwood City and hoped to make a profit, at least break even. Luck and timing was with us. Business was so brisk we had to order more trees and started flocking them for an extra fee. My brothers spent their school vacation helping my husband at the tree lot.

One Christmas, when my husband, baby son and I, along with my sister Esther and her husband, Vernon, lived at the Sky Ranch, on Kings Mountain in Redwood City, I made a model of Kings Mountain on the top of a kitchen table. I moved the table to a corner of the living room and decorated the tiny Sequoia trees around the tiny Sky Ranch.

Over the years Christmas trees came and went. Most of them fir trees, but occasionally a blue spruce was decorated. The fir trees were always bushier, but the fragrance of either added to the holiday festivities. I never decorated an aluminum tree, but they were popular for several years, and then faded from sight.

I once returned a Christmas tree to the lot and demanded an exchange. As I watched the helper nail the wooden stand on the tree I had purchased, I told him it was crooked but he said it would be fine. When I got it home I strung the lights and decorated it but had to turn it so it leaned against the wall in order to stand straight. It looked ok so I went about my house chores and suddenly I heard a crash. The tree had fallen down and decorations scattered all over the floor. I picked up the tree and set it more firmly against the wall and redecorated it. It crashed a second time, breaking many of the decorations. I was really annoyed, and rather than fixing it again, I removed the lights and any ornaments still on the tree and took it back to the lot. An exchange was made, setting the world right again, but I think I’m the only person who ever returned a Christmas tree.

When I lived in France, our French student friends came to help decorate our tree and insisted on candles even though that practice had long disappeared in the states because of fire hazard. With great caution, we lit the candles. The sight was quite enchanting and dramatic.

Plastic Christmas trees have been on the market for a long time, but tree farms offer genuine trees with ideal shapes for holding ornaments and a star at the top. For the last few years I have continued displaying the same 2 foot tall imitation table tree that came with charming tiny wooden ornaments and mini lights.