Most of the time, the month changes and you barely notice. But when December rolls around, the signs are everywhere. There are glittery trees in shops and in plazas, brightly lit stars hanging over the street, “Santa’s helpers” in the department stores, advertisements all over the TV. Nobody can be in any doubt — Christmas is coming!
All over the Christian world, children get twitchy. They lie awake at night, counting the days. They become both greedy and generous, wanting to get great stuff, but also to give well. They enter into their family Christmas traditions with enthusiasm, and why not?
I grew up in New England, and every special thing about Christmas was a treasure to me. We had to bake the cookies. We had to buy the tree and decorate it. We had to help with the zillions of Christmas cards that Mom was writing to all parts of the globe. We had to put the funny fat Santa with the white fur beard in his place on the clock. We had to watch Rudolph and Frosty and Charlie Brown and, especially, the Grinch. We had to sing the carols, every one of them, with all the verses. My sisters and I were a lot like all the other well-off white kids enjoying Christmas, but we had something extra. We had the tree lot.
Rewind two hundred years. In the mid-1820s, a German literature professor at Harvard University and his American wife observed the German tradition of bringing an evergreen tree inside and decorating it with paper chains, ornaments, and candles at Christmas time, and an enchanted visitor wrote about it. Charles and Eliza Follen are thus credited with bringing the Christmas Tree to America. (They were a remarkable couple. Among much else, Charles set up and ran the first gymnasium in Boston, while Eliza wrote many poems and books, including the nursery rhyme “Three Little Kittens.”) The couple were ardently antislavery, which got him fired from Harvard, and he became the minister at a Unitarian church in East Lexington. He designed their new building, an unusual octagonal church, and prayed that “its doors might never be closed against any one.” Alas, he never saw the completed church, as he was drowned on his way to its opening in 1840.
Fast-forward and we find Follen Church in East Lexington: still octagonal, still thriving, still letting everyone in. It is the oldest church building in one of America’s oldest towns. Every December, it calls itself “the Christmas Tree Church” and carries out its major fundraiser for the year — selling Christmas trees. For many years, the church has imported freshly cut balsam fir trees from Red Beach, Maine, propped them up on racks in the carpark across the road, and sold Christmas trees. In the 1970s and 80s, one of the leaders of this activity was my dad, Arthur.
The biggest event of our year, almost, was the day the trees arrived. We lived around two corners and above the tree lot, so we could peer through the skeletal branches to see what was going on. Was it there yet? As soon as the truck arrived, a large crew of helpers swung into gear, tossing the big bundles of trees into the back of the lot, so the truck driver could get on his way. We were usually in long-johns and thick sweaters and warm jackets, woolly socks and hats, always with thick heavy gloves. Balsam firs are both sticky with sap and stickery with needles.
Once the truck was gone, the racks were installed. We had to hunt for the places in the ground where the supporting columns screwed in, then attach the top bars. They needed to be very sturdy, as hundreds of trees would lean on each one. At about the same time, a crew would be up on ladders organizing the lights. My mom would have repainted the signs with this year’s pricing codes, and would often arrive at an opportune time with thermoses of hot chocolate and coffee.
We would put together the little hut that was used for shelter. Once the racks were ready, pricing could begin. Adults with knives would cut open the bundles.(When I was a kid, they were tied together with twine, but I think they come in plastic nets now.) We had a legendary tree-pricer, Dave B., who would stand godlike among the trees, lift each one up, and call out a color. Then he’d drop it down, tip first, toward one of us kids. We would tie on the correct color tag — red was the cheapest, then yellow, green, and blue (they’ve added orange and purple since). Extra huge trees would get a white tag with a number written on it. Once a tree was tagged, it could be taken to the racks. Older kids and other adults did this job. You have to carry a tree carefully, dragging it with the stump forward so you don’t pull off any branches. One hand on the stump, one on the trunk about midway up among the branches; lift and pull. Ground the stump, then pivot the tree so it lands on the rack. Even if you do wear gloves, you get pitch all over your hands, and it doesn’t scrub off for days (and it smells great)!
Some years, the first Saturday in December was very cold, and we had to take turns tying on tags because you can’t do it with mittens on. Some years it was way too warm, and we would worry that the trees would go brown by Christmas. Sometimes a tree would have a nest in it, and that would remind you they were real trees, that they had really grown for some years in a plantation in Maine. We didn’t know where Red Beach was, but we knew that was where the trees came from.
Somebody from the church would arrive at lunchtime with huge pots full of warm food, macaroni and cheese, lasagna, rolls, soup, stew. After a short break, we would be back at the job, because the first day of sales was Sunday, and we had to be ready. There is nothing more seasonal and cheering than selling Christmas trees. Everyone wants to buy your product, and there are bright lights, and it’s outside in the brisk (possibly freezing) air, and you can sing Christmas carols as loud as you want. The lot was open all day Saturdays, Sundays after church, and after school on week days. Both my parents had jobs, so it fell to us to open the lot at 3:00 PM on week days and stay until the first rostered sellers arrived. Then we would go down at 5:00 to collect the cash and make sure the shift changed, and then again at 7:00. The lot closed at 9:00 — usually Dad went to do that one.
Huge handfuls of cash came in. Even when I was young, a long time ago, Christmas trees in affluent Lexington cost $5 to $30. (I see on the website that trees cost $30 to $90 now.) Every night in December my dad would count the cash and fill it in on his chart, how much each shift brought in. It was all stored in a drawer in our dining room. He would plan his next announcement at church — he was a quiet man but could be very funny when he did speak up — letting people know how much was coming in and which shifts still needed people.
Everyone in the church enjoyed selling trees, and most people would sign up for one or more shifts. But if a shift was empty, then it was the Smith girls who would step in. Two hours isn’t very long, but we were just standing in a parking lot in the freezing cold and sometimes it was a bit grim. This was before they had invented fleece, you know. We just had parkas and wool mittens and hats. I can remember some Very Cold Feet.
You could pass the time tying twine bits together. The trees came wrapped in lengths of less than a meter, which were pretty useless, but if you tied them together into long lines, then they were good for helping customers tie a big tree to the top of their car. Small trees often went into cars — such a wet, pitchy mess, but people loved it.
If it snowed (and it did!), then someone had to go down and shake off the trees, because the snow made them so heavy that branches would break or racks would collapse. It was a revolting job; the cold snow would sift down your neck and into your wrists, you’d be damp and sweaty and cold all at once.
Sometime around 15 December would come the annual panic. We aren’t going to sell enough trees! Who ordered all these trees? What will we do with hundreds of leftover trees? Should we reduce the prices? My dad and his girls would serenely ignore all the fuss.
About the same time, we would choose the Smith family tree. This was where my mom came into her own. We had a lot of ornaments, so we needed a big tree. Not too tall. Nice and round. Symmetrical. We argued and dithered and waded through the racks for ages until we found the right one. I definitely recall one year when she chopped off a branch, drilled a hole, and glued it into the other side to make it look better. We moved half the furniture out of the living room to make room for the tree, laid down sheets, and found the special holder and all the boxes of ornaments. She would wind round the tree the strings of lights — both white and colorful, blinking and constant, a whole galaxy of them. Then we listened to Christmas music while we decorated the tree, talking the whole time — large balls at the bottom, small balls at the top. We never had tinsel or fake snow, just lots and lots of hanging things, collected over many years from many countries, each with a story, told as we hung it up.
As soon as the tree was decorated, wrapped presents could be put ’round it. I remember loving to sneak downstairs in the dark, turn on the lights, and just sit and watch them (I never ever handled a present to see what might be in it, never, not me…). During the last week before Christmas, there naturally were a lot of events at the church. A Christmas craft fair,
the candlelight service for children, a carol service, a special concert. We sold trees after each of these events, even during the events if we weren’t taking part.
And then finally it was the 24th of December. My friend James and I would always sign up for the last shift on Christmas Eve. We would sell trees for a discount, trying to get rid of as many as we could. We gave some away. We tried to help as many people as we could. At 9:00 PM, in the quiet, cold—often snowy—tree lot, we would turn off the lights, put up a sign that said “help yourself,” and leave the lot open for the night. It was a numinous moment, a moment when the stars and snow and trees and friendship and openness and tradition all combined to say: Christmas is here.
Sometime in January we would load up the last few leftover trees, collect up all the twine and plastic wrap, and take it all to the dump. Nothing loses value faster than a balsam fir after December 25.
So you can understand that I consider myself something of an expert on Christmas trees. Fast forward again to the early 2000s — when I had become a householder with a family of my own, living 20,000 km away, in southern New Zealand. We normally had Christmas with either set of grandparents, or in the tropics, but this time we were going to be home. I could have a tree!
Well, in New Zealand they don’t use balsam firs. They sell white pine. It’s a silly droopy tree with long needles, and it doesn’t smell right. I refused to buy one. We had a gigantic Douglas fir on our own section, so I climbed up and sawed off a branch to be our tree. Of course, it wasn’t round and symmetrical — I found myself drilling holes and gluing in branches. We didn’t have a tree-holder, but my Kiwi husband assured me that a bucket of sand would do the job. And we didn’t have many ornaments, but I bought some lights and twined them ’round. My sons weren’t keen to help decorate, but I put on some music and hung up a few ornaments anyway. The thing is, it’s summer in December in New Zealand. The 21st of December is the longest day. By the time it’s dark enough to see festive lights, you’re in bed. It’s the end of a long, tiring school year. You want to play outside. You eat cherries and strawberries. You want to go to the beach because it’s summer holidays, and nothing smells or feels or sounds like the Christmases I remember.
But this is also true: no matter how old you get, no matter how far from home you end up, you can creep out of bed at midnight, flick on the tree lights, sit on the floor in the dark, and it’s still magic.
Merry Christmas!
Abby in Dunedin, New Zealand