Tree Hunting Column

Below is a column that Brian wrote several years ago. He submitted it to the Post after his success with the marriage article, but it was not published. I found it the other day and thought you loyal readers would enjoy it.

Tree Hunting Column
By Brian Maynor
Last modified, December 10, 2000

Last week, my family went Christmas tree hunting. My family that day included my wife Susan, my youngest brother (sporting a winter goatee he’s been working on for a couple weeks), my sister-in-law and me. We all piled into a Ford Explorer and headed out to the Missouri countryside.

A variety of traditions were represented in the SUV that morning. My brother and I grew up with fake trees—our first Christmas tree our parents bought at Sears and Roebuck. It was the kind with plastic sheaths that slipped down over a metal pole and hard plastic branches that plugged into the sheaths. Three hours, seven cups of coffee and two domestic dispute calls later, it was assembled. One New Year’s Day, in the interest of efficiency, we hoisted the entire tree into the attic, thereby saving ourselves hours of tedious work the next year.

“We’re brilliant!” we said.

By June, however, the branches had all broken under their own weight and lay strewn around the bare scrawny trunk—a pile of dead plastic brush. We’d killed our Christmas tree.

Susan’s family, meanwhile, drove out to Pea Ridge Christmas tree farm every year, drank hot chocolate and ate kettle corn, took hay rides to the tree fields and held a family “contest” to see who could discover the best tree. I put quotes around “contest” because Susan, the only girl in the family, somehow always won.

These days, my wife’s mom has two trees and hundreds of ornaments, each of which has its own cushioned compartment in an airtight box in the off-season. Each hook is removed from the ornament, and the hooks are stored in a separate box. Each ornament has the year it was acquired written discreetly on it. The organization is all very pleasing to the Slightly Uptight Eldest Child in me.

But the Child From a Big Family in me likes the way my brothers and I grew up. Toss the ornaments in a big box, hooks and all. Done. Plenty of time left to light firecrackers left over from Fourth of July, chase the basset hound around the living room, hold the annual family sumo wrestling match. (Only since we’ve been out of the house has my mom started buying breakable ornaments.)

Last holiday season, my wife and I played too dramatically the role of Slightly Uptight Eldest Children (Susan and I are both the eldest) while my brother and sister-in-law played too dramatically the role of Too Laid Back Younger Children (Peter is the youngest, and is laid back enough to make up for Melanie’s maturity). Peter and I argued about everything from where we should have Thanksgiving dinner to whether we should have fresh or canned cranberry sauce.

But last year, both couples were in our first year of marriage and we were still figuring out how to relate to each other, not to mention how to slice a turkey, how to fit an eight foot tree into a tiny aluminum tree stand and how to make a decent eggnog.

This year we each got over ourselves and after a Thanksgiving straight from Hallmark, we decided to press our luck.

9:00 am sharp: Slightly Uptight Eldest Kids show up as planned, ready to go, having compromised after suggestion to leave at 7:00 on a Saturday morning was poo-pooed by Too Laid Back Younger Kids.
9:05 am: Younger Kids finally hear doorbell; roll out of bed.
9:18 am: Clean out Younger Brother’s truck: remove coffee mugs, tennis racket, shovel, Elvis Costello LP, several weeks’ worth of clothes, guitar, bag of mulch, squeegee.
9:24 am: All pile in, realize we had left our tape measure inside. Susan suggests running back inside to get it; I insist I can eyeball the heights.
9:56 am: Anonymous older brother suggests singing Christmas carols. All other passengers roll eyes. No carols are sung.
10:08 am: Sing “Me and Bobby McGee” at the top of our lungs. Close enough.
10:35 am: Check map: where the heck are we?
10:50 am: Arrive at Pea Ridge Farms, hop on board hay trailer, just leaving for the fields.
10:56 am: Receive our Big Orange Saw.
11:08 am: After eyeballing heights of several trees, I admit I don’t even know what “eyeballing” means.
11:11 am: First of many times the phrase “If this side faces the wall…” is used.
11:28 am: Younger Kids pick tree, saw it down and are back in the barn enjoying a fire and hot chocolate before Eldest Kids have narrowed down our top six choices, rated by fullness of brush, depth of color, and how far up the hill we have to drag it if we cut it.
11:29 am: Fight anti-environmental temptation to cut a ten foot tree off three feet up and use just the top.
11:47 am: Rationalize away Charlie Brown Syndrome (repeat to selves: “They’re not sad if we don’t pick them….they’re not sad if we don’t pick them…”).
12:08 pm: I pick my favorite tree. I call him Dudley.
12:09 pm: Susan insults Dudley, chooses own tree.
12:10 pm: I saw down Susan’s tree, name it Helga, drag it up hill.
5:30 pm: Tree lit and trimmed. Hot Chocolate for me, Lemon Zinger for Susan.
11:39 pm: Younger Kids call up: “How do we get this !@#% tree stand to work?”

Turns out we’re forging our own traditions and we’ve learned a couple things. One, Pea Ridge is farther away than we remembered. Two, traditions are more arbitrary than we ever thought growing up. They’re not written in stone—somebody like us just made them up. Who knew? As Uptight Eldest Children, we sometimes confuse tradition with its underlying purpose: loving our neighbors. It’s a means to an end, not the end itself.

And I learned that Susan really does pick out a good tree, and that if in the future we’re a little less uptight and if our younger counterparts are a little more uptight, we’ll really have some happy holidays. And if that doesn’t work, we always have Sears and Roebuck.