Oy Christmas Tree

It was the Sunday after Thanksgiving, and there was a seasonal chill in the central Texas air. Conditions were perfect: it was time to purchase the annual tree.

I packed the boys into the car, along with our friend Melissa, her son Statton, and Statton’s sister Hayden. The six of us made our way over to Evergreen Farms in Elgin, just a few miles east of us. (We had decided to divide and conquer, with J. going to Costco’s to do the week’s shopping. Plus, the four of us have been on top of each other for the past week. A break was needed by all.)

The farm was great fun, complete with a hay ride out to where you pick your tree, activities like face painting and marshmallow roasting for the other kids and a general sense of good, old-fashioned “Holiday Cheer.” ®™

After inexpertly tying the tree to the roof with twine and bungee cords, and after thanking God for keeping it fastened up there for the time it took to get it home, the children were eager to begin trimming the tree.

We got the Christmas music on the radio and set about decorating the tree. The kids are getting better at it every year, and I’ve learned to let go of the control and let them have it a bit. As a result, the finished product is perhaps a tad rough, but it’s an obvious collaboration, which is most important in my mind.

Of course the holidays (and particularly this one) are always evocative of the past, and how could this nostalgic navel gazer not watch his two sons squabble over ornament placement, without once more traveling back in time? It’s the late 1960’s and early 1970’s – when my father, an avid amateur gardener, had an idea. Instead of buying a cut Christmas tree, or one of the garish artificial varieties they sold at the five and dime, Hanno would purchase a small pine tree, complete with root ball, every year. At the conclusion of the holidays, he would dig a hole in the cold, hard soil and plant the sapling in his yard.

(As a side note: I know what the Jews who are reading this must be thinking: “Wait, wasn’t Hanno a refugee from Nazi Germany? What’s with all the goyische stuff about Christmas and trees?”

Well, Gayle, the way it was explained to me was this: There is a combination of factors at play here. On the one hand, the upper middle class Jews in Germany were often liberal agnostics who enjoyed the strong secular holiday of gift giving that was Weinachten.

The other, perhaps more understandable explanation or motive was that he married a Depression-baby Schikse from Little Rock, Arkansas who, although poor, came from a long tradition of Christmases past.

Either way, the result was some lovely holidays, which my brother and I loved and will never forget. In the photos, the trees sometimes look tiny – not touching the ceiling like the Noble fir we bought yesterday – but if you drive past the old house on Hartford Lane today, take note of the towering pines, some forty years later, part of my father’s legacy of the productive time he spent on this Earth.