My dad simply removed him and sent him over to my brother and me for consolation.
Too bad he was just a little guy and not that strong. He wrapped himself around the base of that tree and told my dad he wasn’t moving and that the cedar tree was NOT coming home with us. He was seriously going to cut that tree down and put it in our living room! That’s when my little brother made a break for it. I couldn’t believe my eyes as my dad got out his chainsaw. I was expecting to wake up at any moment, saved from the thought of planting the Ugliest Tree in the Bookcliffs in our living room, but my younger brother’s primal cry pierced my ears and reminded me this was all very real. With berries on it even! What was she thinking? Didn’t have any holes and looked nice, but it was a CEDAR tree. Instead, much to our horror, we were treated to an ugly, ugly scene. We were expecting an angel’s chorus to sing and the lights from Heaven to shine down on THE PERFECT TREE as we came up on the scene.
My brothers and I ran to our mother’s side with much anticipation. “Oh Alan! Here it is! I’ve found it! I want this one!” mom called. After walking ridge after ridge with no tree meeting her satisfaction, my brothers and I were overjoyed when we finally heard our mother shriek with delight and call to our father. She wanted a fat, bushy, twinkly, fragrant pinion pine to grace the living room window with its awesome holiday presence. She knew what she wanted and no little Charlie Brown tree would do. She was out to find THE perfect Christmas tree. It was a Thanksgiving weekend with very little snow so traversing the ridges was quite easy and my mother was on a mission.
Those are memories I’ll cherish the rest of my life and try to re-create with my own children, but I will never forget the year my mother picked the worst tree in the Bookcliffs for our family Christmas tree. Some years Mother Nature blesses us with a beautiful blanket of snow to trudge through when selecting the perfect tree and my favorite memories include sledding down the ridges or gliding along behind the truck in a tube on top of the snow while looking for the tree. And on the Friday after Thanksgiving, we search for our family Christmas tree. We escape the city and head to our favorite spot in the Bookcliffs and spend time with the deer, elk and coyotes. No shopping lines, over-crowded stores or holiday kick-off sales for us. My family always spends Thanksgiving weekend in camping trailers. I spend my Friday after Thanksgiving looking for the most important of Christmas symbols: the great and mighty Christmas Tree. Some of you may spend your day in line at the local discount store fighting over the latest electronic device with twenty other grabby, sleep deprived holiday elves, but not me. I must admit I’d rather spend them curled up next to a crackling fire with a good book or snuggled up with a kid or two (or a dog if no kid is available) watching a movie, but the Friday after Thanksgiving is an exception. It’s going in the living room.” Clark and Rusty Girsswold, Christmas Vacation “We’re kicking off our fun old fashion family Christmas by heading out into the country in the old front-wheel drive sleigh to embrace the frosty majesty of the winter landscape and select that most important of Christmas symbols.ĭad, this tree won’t fit in our back yard. Mom's "PERFECT" Christmas Tree was the wrong species! It was a CEDAR! With BERRIES even!