CHRISTMAS 1950

Growing up in the fifties there was no such thing as an artificial Christmas tree. I don’t even remember a Christmas tree lot in my hometown but they were popular in the big city, I guess. My father, on this particular holiday, of which I speak, borrowed a page out of “Chevy Chase’s Christmas Vacation,” although the script was yet to be written for many years. I had to keep telling him. “My name is Mike, not Rusty,” but maybe that was just a coincidence.

So a couple of weeks before Christmas, dad, mom and all eight of us kids would pile into the old family sedan and we would wander the countryside, looking for the perfect Christmas tree. Dad’s philosophy was that any land that didn’t have a fence around it was public domain and the trees were there for the taking. In fact, it was an honor for any tree to be chosen as a Christmas tree and he would mutter something about those rights granted to us by our forefathers in the constitution. I was never able to quite figure out—if, what he said was true-- why did one of us kid’s always have to be a lookout-- and how come, what should have been a fun family event, always turned into a snatch and grab. There was no time for measurements either, as Dads reasoning was, we could always make the tree fit the room. Myself, sitting in the back seat of the car that day could not help but notice that Mom and Dad had a remarkable resemblance to Bonnie and Clyde.

On this particular year of, which I speak, the tree we brought home, tied to the roof of the old Plymouth, could have decorated Rockefeller Square. Most of the treetop was gone by the time we got home, being drug down the highway behind the car. The rest broke off while the tree was being squeezed through the front door, which I can only describe as trying to push a corncob into a Pepsi bottle. Because the base was ten inches in diameter we dispensed with the inadequate tree stand and put it in a washtub. The top of the tree-- after trimming-- had a similar size diameter as the bottom, so the angel that was supposed to be perched up there, alone on a spindle, had a virtual stage for itself, Rudolf, Santa, G.I. Joe and a Raggedy Ann doll.

The girth of the tree took so many lights to adequately light it, that we were only allowed to turn them on for a few minutes each night and then only after unplugging every other electrical appliance in the house. I personally witnessed the lights in the neighbor’s house dimming and the streetlight in the alley going out when dad plugged the tree in. Also because the living room was not that big, most of the family had to sit in the dining room when we gathered around the tree. Dad seemed to be especially proud that year because we heated with wood and he was heard to say after Christmas, “There was a quarter cord of wood in that Christmas Tree.” Yes Virginia, my family was one of the original recyclers. So with those fond memories of Christmas past in mind, this year I decided to go cut a tree myself and get back into the spirit my father tried to instill in all of us. My neighbor has so many spruce trees she won’t miss one but if she does, I have my story already concocted. I will tell her it was an old man in a 36 Plymouth with a whole raft of kids and he went that way and no she cannot come see my Christmas tree.