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Holiday Articles (21)

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Most recent posting below. See other articles in the column to the right.

The Perfect Tree

December 12, 2006 By Wendell Collins

It stood there, beckoning us, head and shoulders above the crowd. Not so much in stature, but in perfection – the right height, the right width, the right type (Fraser Fir had been our recent years’ pick.) And the right price for always-frugal Mom. (Just under the 7-8 foot mark kept it in the affordable $64 range)

“Buy me! Buy me!” it seemed to say. We did a mad dash around the perimeter to scan the remaining sea of trees, and returned, knowingly, confident that we had found the perfect Christmas tree.

We had ventured out bright and early on the first Saturday of December, before the crowds descended on the tree farms of Mercer County and beyond, before other tree connoisseurs snatched the best trees up. (Sadly, our neighbor and good friend, a formidable competitor in the “perfect tree of the year” search, had discovered slimmer pickings when their family went tree shopping the next day.)

With 17 years of marriage under Mr. and Mrs. Santa Collins’s belt, we have experienced plenty of NOT perfect trees. We’ve pursued the perfect Christmas tree in many different ways, with varying results. There was, in our early days of marriage and babies, the “cut your own” route – complete with singing “Over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house we go, the horse knows the way to carry the sleigh…” Cutting down your own tree is a lot of work, akin to making your own stuffing and gravy on Thanksgiving (which I try to avoid) -- but with more sweat. Years ago as we stomped around the snowy hillside of a Griggstown farm years ago, we found a so-so tree, but the magical experience of the snow and the farm and the spirit of Christmas outweighed its imperfections. The next year we cut down our tree at a farm that featured no snow, no hills, and a soggy muddy hayride. Not a great tree either, so we switched gears the following year.

That fateful year spearheaded the Blue Spruce streak. My husband researches anything he buys with the intensity of a stock analyst with billions of dollars on the line. He bet on Blue Spruces because they smell great, are different (Blue!), and are very hearty (heavy ornaments don’t weigh down their branches). They also tend to be well rounded (important for our Christmas tree corner) but they are also comparatively pricey (a challenge for frugal Mom). And another downside -- you had to wear a suit of armor to put lights or ornaments on it. If you stabbed your hand (or even worse – underneath a fingernail) on its knifelike needle, it cut to the quick. I get the shivers just thinking about it. And the sharpness belied the dryness – Spruces can DRINK and if you aren’t around to water it hourly, the needles will fall off like Charlie Brown’s buck-naked Christmas tree.

For a few interim years we did the live tree (it was really HEAVY, and didn’t survive much after Christmas), the fundraising tree (the extra money we paid went to a good cause but we ended up with a not great tree), an inexpensive (as in you get what you pay for) tree from a nursery near Flemington. Then FINALLY we stumbled across the tree farm we have reliably depended upon for the past few years for the perfect Fraser Fir. The family who owns the farm (If I revealed the location IWHTKY) are nice people, with a good selection of big and little, type variety, located in a pretty spot (who wants to buy their Christmas Tree on Route One?), not too crowded, not too expensive, one stop shopping for wreaths too, and best of all, they have “The Marriage Saver” prominently on sale. (The Marriage Saver is a miraculous tree stand that can support even the largest, toughest tree and fortify the most stressed out of couples at the most wonderful time of the year.)

Next to the Marriage Saver tree stand, I plan to the invent the Marriage Saver Eternal Christmas Lights – tree lights that never burn out, and never ruin it for the rest of the strand. How many times has my husband (I handle the decorations part) dismantled the lights, bulb-by-bulb, strand-by-strand, looking for the culprit that dims it for the rest of the bunch? For some reason this year we had no stray bad bulbs, knock on wood, so the perfect tree also had the perfect lights.

Why is a Christmas tree selection so important to our family’s traditions? When I look back on my own childhood, I remember when we transitioned from live tree to a fake tree, the year my parents separated and ultimately got divorced. That same faux fir came out of the basement every year from adolescence to college and beyond. It must have been much easier and cheaper for my mom to break out the artificial substitute than schlep out to the tree lot, attempt to haul a tree and put it up with a poor substitute for the Marriage Saver (and alas no marriage to save). We compensated for the fake tree (at least it was dark green and not blue or silver), with white lights, a trend setter at the time when colored bulbs of the 70s were the rage, perhaps inspired by Charlie Brown’s Christmas special.

I would sit in our dark living room, age 13 or so, the only light shed from the aura of the tree, and squint my eyes and pretend the tree was real. With my eyes half-closed, it reminded me of looking at an impressionist painting and catching the original vision of the artist. It’s funny, but I still catch myself squinting at our own tree today – perhaps to obfuscate the slightly visible wire of the lights – but out of old habit nevertheless.

Just like the Velveteen Rabbit, maybe with enough love a fake tree can become real, as long as you believe in the Spirit of Christmas.

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