Cartoons cannot be trusted

The trees always looked a bit troubled, like they needed a few more years of growth to leave their awkwardness behind and blossom into the holiday centerpieces that I had come to know from television and Boys Life magazine.

Each year my siblings and I would plunge into the woods behind our house to push through the snow and brush in an effort to hunt and capture an unsuspecting conifer. Any chance of procuring a tree of quality was doomed from the start, as a blanket of snow usually covered the woods in December hiding the copious arboreal imperfections. The closeness to the ground of the members of the hunting party ensured a skewed perspective that usually resulted in a tree with proportions better suited for a life of quiet solitude in the forest than display in a home.

We never came back empty handed, however, and often had a wealth of unfortunate choices that our fragile committee weighed carefully, examining the qualities of the foliage and estimating the heights of a few unlucky finalists. A blessed member of the troop, who attacked with vigor and sawed with aggressive, uncoordinated actions, would ceremoniously fell the tree, coating their clothes in a blanket of sap and dust. We would drag the tree home, scattering its sparse needles across the land to present it with great pride to my mother. She would eye the scant foliage and the tangle of awkwardly scattered branches of varying lengths and dutifully proclaim her love for our wretched conifer. Had we looked into her eyes, I expect that they would have been singing a song of horror at the prospect of housing our brutalized bush for the next month.

The tree would of course be too tall and need to be cut once more, unfortunately necessitating the removal of the tree’s only full branches. The stand would be rusted shut from the water, which dangled life in front of the previous year’s monstrosity, and smells of WD-40 would fill the house, mingling with the scent of spruce to announce in full that Christmas was indeed here. The tree was spun in place in search of a nice face to present to the world, and a bare side to hide in the corner. Only now would we see just how terrible our tree really was, with screams erupting from the youngest and blame being doled out by the oldest.

“It will look better when it is decorated,” a lie cast forth and born out of that odd combination of love and frustration, that returned the group to the task and imbued us with a renewed sense of purpose. We hoped for a Charlie Brown-esque tree resurrection, but eventually learned that cartoons cannot be trusted.

Lights would be strung only to flicker and go dark as soon as they were in place, to be cursed at and fiddled with, working only when perfectly in line with both Neptune and Pluto. Boxes of ornaments emerged and the lower reachable branches of the tree were quickly covered in trinkets made from Popsicle sticks, light bulbs and felt. Old art projects dangled from the branches, some crazy-eyed children looked forth from tilted school photos that cling to their ornaments year after year through the magic of adhesive. Still looking a little bare, packs of tinsel purchased on sale years prior from Pay-N-Save supplied the filler to seal over the bare spots with the desperation of a bald man coating his head with hair in a can. The star was placed on the top and the tree judged complete.

The lights and tinsel shone brightly, and for a moment you could almost believe that the tree was not ugly.

We loved our trees. I cannot say that they loved us, but they were synonymous with Christmas and after the flock of kids was grown and my mother nonchalantly departed from trees gathered nearby, a little something was lost. Sure, our living room was transformed from an awkward embarrassment into a lovely holiday spectacle that did not involve robbing the small population of spruce trees in our backyard of an adolescent member, the vacuum was no longer clogged with needles and the profound sadness that accompanies watching a plant slowly die was removed.

But with all change, even though much is gained, there is something that disappears, and I expect most of us have inside a small part that hates to see a tradition die, even if it is a nonsensical one. My wife and I have not made the logical move to an artificial tree just yet — we got our Christmas tree this year from Duane in the old Hammakers in Palmer. I look back on these tree searches with fond memories. The experiences were a fantastic bit of familial absurdity.

Maybe that is the point of these traditions, to break us from our day-to-day life, to throw bizarre challenges our way and see how we cope. It ensures that we each wander through this world with curious little memories that help us see through the mundane and appreciate the fascinating miracle that is life.

So I send a long overdue thank you to my mother and father for recognizing the beauty of the mess that was our Christmas tree and for putting up with the tinsel and sap and fights over hanging the favored ornaments. They ensured that each of us has a special place in our heart for the fragile plant that became the center of our world by surrendering their living room to accommodate the messiness that is family. It has undoubtedly made my world a richer place, and next year, I think I may just wander through my parent’s backyard and look for a tree — and then go visit Duane, because that plot of earth really must be cursed when it comes to trees.

Pete LaFrance grew up in Palmer and has moved back to the area after a number of years living abroad.