SOMETIMES SMALL IS BIG

DECEMBER 2, 2023 – As a tree hugger I suppose I’ve always been a hypocrite when it came to Christmas trees: at Yuletide—with kid-like glee—I revel in the arboreal grave lot by the supermarket. As the aromatic Fraser and balsam firs, Scotch and white pine gasp their last into the December air, I’m filled with good cheer and feel not an ounce of sorrow. Visions of sugar plums dance upon my thoughts and banish whatever woes and worries might stalk me. After all, ’tis the season to be jolly.

At the entrance to the tree lot I notice signs instructing tree-shoppers on “HOW TO CARE FOR YOUR XMAS TREE.” Distracted by the immediate quest, I’m invariably blind to the signs’ irony: caring for trees guillotined in their tender youth. And executed why? Oh yes: to give fleeting pleasure to modern folk perpetuating an ancient pagan tradition; one co-opted by early Christians, condemned by later Christian extremists (Pilgrims and Puritans), and leveraged to the hilt by American retailers in a culture at once unified and divided in its universal pursuit of . . . bankable green.

No, I’ve refused to see that at the arboreal equivalent of a butcher shop lined with pork loins, lamb chops, and sides of beef, care instructions for trees brutally axed are as dissonant as a “How to be Kind to Animals” brochure at the counter where parts of slaughtered animals were sold.

Only in the cool light of day do I recognize the contradiction of my participation in the seasonal slaughter. The rest of the year I’m an incorrigible tree-hugger tending to the hundreds of “Christmas trees” I’ve planted in my “tree garden” up at the lake and care for as if they were my children. Around those trees I wield only the tools of a barber, never the blade of a killer. I envision those “children of the forest” not as fleeting centers of attraction inside homes but as guardians of the earth, standing tall long after the world’s current crop of humans—meek and mighty—have joined their ancestral dust. Yet, as a member of the human race I share in its myopia, hypocrisy, and limitless capacity for rationalized self-contradiction. I can be a tree-hugger who delighted in buying an executed Christmas tree off the local slaughter lot.

If you’re concerned about my mental and moral state, you needn’t be: with my mind unleashed and fingers afforded free reign across the keyboard, my tongue is very much in-cheek. My own capacity for rationalization highlights the fact that “Christmas trees” are cultivated for the sole purpose of being sacrificed—just as beef cattle are. In the spirit of analogous disclosure, though I love animals I’m not a vegetarian (let alone a full-fledged progressive (vegan)), and I’ve never mourned the death of a steer when I’m eating a steak.

Apart from “all that” is an eminently practical concern: the physical burden of observing the Christmas tree tradition. As a kid, I was oblivious to the chore: our dad took care of it and without any strain or complaint. When our parents aged, they replaced a real tree with a fake one, and over the years, the latter made its appearance later and later in December until it made none at all. In my B.E.E. (“Before Empathy Era”) years, I assigned a humbug factor to my parents’ fading interest in Der Tannenbaum.

But then in my own geezerhood, I too began losing enthusiasm. I disliked hunting for a tree in the cold; hauling it home, then cutting a slice off the bottom of the trunk and pruning enough lower branches to fit the trunk into the stand; dragging the damn tree into the house and leaving a trail of needles between the entryway and the appointed place of display; straightening the tree in the uncooperative stand, as my wife directed, “A little this way . . . No! Too much! Now that way . . . Okay . . . No, too far . . . now back. Hmmm. Not quite that much . . . Let me see from this angle . . . But I don’t like this side of the tree facing the room . . . Can you turn that side toward the wall? . . . Not quite that far . . . A little less . . . a little more . . . Let me check from the doorway . . . Hmmm now it’s not straight . . . a little toward your left . . . your left”—all to be repeated after the tree tipped over; then to water the tree with the . . . but where’s the plastic watering can that we always use?; then realizing that we forgot to put down the waterproof tablecloth under the stand.

This year a little voice said to me, “How ’bout the fake tree after all—a small one that fits on top of the steamer trunk that’s now a table by the front window?” As luck would have it, the little voice was in two places at once—the other being inside my wife’s head. Before I could respond to my inner voice, my wife had acted upon hers. From attic boxes she unpacked a table-top fake tree and planted it on the steamer trunk.

Thanks to our granddaughter’s influential presence, however, my wife soon had a change of heart and mind. “With Illi around,” Beth said, “what do you say we get a real tree? A small one we can put on the [steamer] trunk. I’ll move the artificial one to the table out on the porch.” I reacted enthusiastically. I could eat my Christmas cake and have it too—I could have “real” and “small” in the same tree. As fast as you could say “Rudolph the Red-Nose Reindeer,” Illiana and I grabbed our jackets, jumped into the car, and headed off to the closest “XMAS TREE” lot.

With giddy hearts, we zeroed in on the abundant selection of five-foot Fraser firs. They were as easy as pumpkin pie-from-a-can to lift, and, I noticed—in my inherited Swedish and Connecticut Yankee traditions of frugality—far cheaper than the full-fledged firs. Moreover, we could easily transport the tree inside my wife’s RAV-4 and not have to mess with tying it down to the roof racks.

Once home the little tree readily assumed its place of honor. Beth with her usual good taste and finesse turned Fraser Junior into a royal symbol of the season, filling the room with graceful cheer. The good ol’ pagan ritual is alive and well, thanks to . . . a noble tree severed from its roots and kept on life support until the plug is pulled on the big bright star and packed off to the attic until next December. My wife is happy and our granddaughter too, and therefore, I’m overjoyed. What big delight a small Christmas tree brings!

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© 2023 by Eric Nilsson