He has a Christmas tree all year

“Got your tree up yet?” a friend asked at work last week.
My first inclination was to say,  “No.” But the answer was more accurately, “Yes.” Or maybe somewhere in between.
When I was a kid, our house was usually last on the block to put up a Christmas tree.
Why? I’m not sure.
Part of it was a desire on my parents’ part not to rush the holiday season. The Halloween-is-over-here-comes-Christmas mentality of today would have appalled their generation.
And fear of fire was also a factor.
My parents grew up in an era when it was still not uncommon to have candles lit on the tree rather than strings of lights. And even in my childhood, the electrical safety standards of the time were pretty rudimentary.
Bulbs were hot. Cords were frequently frayed. And it wasn’t unusual for someone to get a sharp shock when stringing the lights.
When we were first married, we seldom had a full-sized tree. Our apartments didn’t have enough room. We left that tradition for our respective homesteads, enjoying the Christmas trees when we visited my folks in Richmond or Connie’s in Illinois.
Kids, of course, changed all that.
But those first few Christmases as parents involved lots of challenges. Getting the thing into the house without expanding the children’s vocabulary the wrong way and decorating it so that little hands couldn’t reach breakable objects, for instance.
We were always “real tree” people and tended to buy them from the fire department, chatting with Francis or Bud or another one of the firemen when we made the purchase.
Over time, our own set of traditions developed.
We shifted from the fire department to some of the area tree farms and cut our own. We inherited ornaments from our own childhoods from our parents, and our kids made ornaments at school and pre-school that we’ll never let go of.
For a couple dozen years, those traditions shaped the holiday season. The tree would be up by about Dec. 10 and would come down at the end of New Year’s weekend.
But as kids grow up, traditions change.
When it’s just the two of you until someone comes home from college, it’s a little tough to get excited about decorating the tree without them.
Admit it, decorating the Christmas tree is something that belongs to the young.
So we became less and less enthusiastic about the task.
We might have taken the route my mother did in the same situation.
She bought a decorated artificial tree at a charity event and hauled it out of storage for the holiday season.
But neither of us much wanted an artificial tree.
So about four or five years ago, we hit upon a compromise.
We’d bought a healthy Norfolk pine at the Flower Nook. It liked our backyard in the summer, and it liked a spot in front of the living room fireplace in the winter.
Voila, instant Christmas tree from a nice-sized houseplant.
Trouble is, that nice-sized houseplant has kept on growing. And growing.
It now stands about 7 feet tall in its pot.
Moving it out of the house each spring and back in each fall is a real production.
But you know what? It makes a beautiful Christmas tree.
Sure, it’s getting a little too big for the house. By next year we may be looking for an institution with high ceilings to adopt it.
But it’s green. It’s alive. And with the lights we put up last weekend, it’s festive.
Is it an ordinary Christmas tree?
Nope. It’s ours.[[In-content Ad]]