Christmas Trees
a story by Colleen Hobbs
Western red cedar is an invasive species in central Oklahoma. The state will pay you to remove them since they shade out native grass and desirable hardwoods. Cutting a cedar at Christmas time, then, weeded the pasture while providing holiday festivity. My father checked his cattle daily, and cedars were always in abundance. When I was still small enough to care deeply about the quality of my Christmas tree, I would find myself in a Chevy pickup in mid-December, my father’s chain saws in the truck bed.
Shrubby, unattractive cedars grow in abundance under black oaks, but the symmetrical trees you could see from the pickup were at least 10 feet tall. My father, uncomplaining, didn’t object if I changed my mind, and we sometimes brought home multiples of these oversized evergreens, oozing sap, dragging in prairie grass, and much too tall for our house.
I have reflected on this childhood memory as one in which my father consistently, knowingly brought home inappropriately sized trees. After selecting trees with my own children, however, I can better appreciate that my parents truly never cared about tree size or aesthetics. I could have picked out a Bradford pear for all they cared.
My father hardly talked when he drove, so my memory is what he did, not what he said: he cut down trees for a small child until she was satisfied. And my mother, lovingly exasperated, trimmed the tree so its tip no longer bent at the our ceilings (which at 11 ½ feet could accommodate the average Norway spruce) and directed me to vacuum spikey trimmings out of the carpet. Their holiday gift was time and patience. My parents, by design, set us up for what outwardly looked like a Christmas tree failure. Each year, we failed big.
Scripture: Isaiah 40: 3-5
A voice is crying out: “Clear the Lord’s way in the desert! Make a level highway in the wilderness for our God! Every valley will be raised up, and every mountain and hill will be flattened. Uneven ground will become level, and rough terrain a valley plain. The Lord’s glory will appear, and all humanity will see it together; the Lord’s mouth has commanded it.”
Prayer
O God, we thank you for memories that bring us joy. For in the re-membering we are bringing together all that was and all that is. Help us practice what we learn from these memories: patience, peace, joy, love. Amen.
