The Family Tree Tree Hunt The Method And The Desired Outcome Have Changed Over The Years, But The Basics Of The Tradition Remain Intact

The guy showed me a perfectly symmetrical tree displaying signs of a recent haircut. “This here’s a Scotch pine,” he proudly boasted, while turning it slowly like a rare bottle of claret. “It don’t need trimmin’ or nothin’ “

It was as beautiful a conifer as man could wrest from nature; deep green, classically shaped, and thick enough to deflect a .45 caliber slug.

Mother Nature was working for Martha Stewart.

“How much?” I asked, my breath billowing into the December air like a smokestack in Nome.

“It’s late. I’ll take 25 bucks.”

With only three days until Christmas I looked over his shoulder at a hundred waste-to-energy-bound trees, and remembered when trees cost a dollar and a half.

“I’ll give ya 10.”

Maybe I should have just called him a sissy. Whatever, he put the Scotch pine back and told me the cheap trees were at the far end of the lot.

It took two more stops along Sprague before we found the right one: a $7 tree that fit perfectly in the front window, with the bad side facing the piano.

That was a year ago, and I’m wondering what this year has in store.

My wife and I have been through a number of Yuletide phases over the years, and I think we’re finally back where we started 35 years ago.

When we were first married and I was still naive enough to believe my wife would prefer a neat set of screwdrivers over a bottle of perfume, hunting for a tree was an all-day adventure of culling a zillion scrawny fir trees on a $2 budget.

We learned to cut a branch from the heavy side to fill a gap on the sparse side, and to fill needle-challenged areas with 10 cents worth of tinsel, which my wife, with infinite patience, placed on the tree one strand at a time; a process from which I was quickly excluded after she caught me chucking the stuff on with looping hook shots.

Ornaments of wood and glass were used to draw the eye away from blighted areas, and after a number of years we had enough of them to make a broomstick look like an objet d’art. We had red ones, and green ones, and blue ones with flocking. There were little glass Santas, and teddy bears, and harps, and sleighs, and pipes, and little birds with brush tails. For a time, it seemed as though we were single-handedly keeping the glass-blowing industry afloat.

Those were the days when tree lights were 14 watters, and we had enough to raise the room temperature 20 degrees. Our Christmas trees of that period became mere mandrels on which to display scintillating ornamentation.

The era of the $2 tree covered with $100 worth of decorations lasted until we entered our post-modern pioneer phase and decided that a tree had no real Christmas meaning unless felled by one’s own hand.

Most of the Spokane Valley is better suited to growing turnips than conifers. The pioneer type is more likely to figure out the Valley Couplet before he finds a tree south of Mica, and while fir and cedar grow in abundance just five miles to the north of us, stepping into those woods with hatchet in hand will most likely introduce one to an irate, gun-toting landowner. Think “Deliverance.”

Trees in the Valley, like hairs on Grandpa’s head, only seem to grow on the fringes. Luckily, we live in the fringe area, and for a period of years harvested the annual pine from the forest above the house.

Jack pine, or bull pine, or whatever our local variety is called, is a nicely scented evergreen, suitable for bark beetles and nesting hawks.

As Christmas trees they are less than story- book perfect. In their youth they are easily accessible, but often lack enough foliage to support an angel and two red globes. By the time they are full and robust, they sit inaccessible, atop a 60-foot forest monarch. To a post-modern pioneer guy, these are minor problems. There’s nothing 40 pounds of ornaments and a half-mile of popcorn on a string can’t fix.

With earflaps down, hatchet in hand, and kids with the Flexible Flyer in tow, we would set forth through the snow to find the perfect tree.

For the first hour we sang Christmas songs and traded jocular comments; judging each tree with a connoisseur’s eye: too thin, too asymmetrical, too bent, too squat.

Nothing would do but the ideal pine.

During the second hour, when the hatchet began to feel as cold as an Eskimo’s flag pole and our toes felt as if they belonged to someone else, we would become less critical, and too asymmetrical usually took its place at the spot by the window. When the kids grew older and less inclined to pull the sled uphill over windfalls and clinging Oregon grape, the grumbling began. By the time they entered their pre-teens we were back to the commercial lots, sorting through pedigreed trees with aristocratic price tags.

One year we briefly considered an artificial tree, but in those days they were made of aluminum, and while they might look fine in some Manhattan townhouse, they weren’t quite right for our rickety old farm place.

Another year, while still reveling in the afterglow of “It’s a Wonderful Life,” we decided to put the tree up on Christmas Eve, ala the George Bailey family.

For some reason it never occurred to me to buy the tree ahead of time. After a period of frantic searching, all the while cursing tree mongers for going home on Christmas Eve, I was about to give up when I spied a sign hung outside Falco’s Nursery on East Sprague: “Free Trees,” it announced.

Feeling like a Scotsman’s business agent, I entered the deserted yard and skulked away with a tree two feet in diameter and 10 feet tall. Despite the panic and lingering embarrassment, awakening to that “found” tree on Christmas morning was more spiritually rewarding than finding a tree we’d been staring at for two weeks.

A couple of years after the children left home, we decided to forgo a tree. With the kids gone Christmas just wasn’t the same.

That night we were visited by three ghostly apparitions who conducted an unwelcome seminar on the true spirit of Christmas. It may have been just a dream or a nightmare caused by a bit of underdone potato.

Whatever, the next morning I wanted to throw back the shutters and toss two shillings to a small boy in the street with orders to buy the largest turkey in town and hotfoot it over to the Cratchit’s house.

The next year, in order to save us another treeless ordeal, our daughter who is a floral designer, presented us with a tree she created from florist stuff. It was small enough to sit atop a coffee table and made of materials that would never wither or droop. From dense green faux foliage peeked tiny exquisitely formed birds and elfin treasures.

It was draped in strings of pearl-like glass beads and, when plugged in, twinkled like Liberace’s pinky-ring.

It was a work of art that could be covered with a large paper sack and stored in the attic after each holiday season.

For a couple of years it enthralled all who witnessed its splendor, until one spring day when I was cleaning out a dusty record collection left over from my tone-deaf years. Without thinking, I sailed a vinyl disc into an old paper sack in a dark corner.

CLINk! SMASH! came the distinctive sounds that only fine art can make when being destroyed by an oaf in the attic.

I blamed it all on Slim Whitman, and for the next few years we made do with fir wreaths hung in the front window for the holiday spirit.

With the arrival of twin grandsons, this balsam tribute was no longer sufficient and we were again at the mercy of the guy whose office is a pickup camper.

It’s been a long process, but it feels good to have Old Tannenbaum back in the living room, and through it all we haven’t lost sight of whose birthday we’re celebrating.

Maybe this year we’ll try the advice of those militant vegetarian, fur-painting, whale-saving folks, and use a live tree that can be planted after Christmas, or maybe …