“Gee…Zuss…Krist” huffs my father, each syllable punctuated by a stroke of his ax into the Christmas tree.

 

            Each year the winter holiday brings dread to our household along with the expected joy.  Early in December Dad shouts that the lights are crooked as teenaged Bobby climbs a ladder and strings them along the outline of the house while Karla, Kathy, and I hide and watch from behind the car.  Mom opens an old Scrabble box containing a cardboard manger set for us to piece together and then complains that we put the sheep where the shepherd goes or that we set it on top of our best piece of furniture, the television set.  Wrapped boxes begin to bulge from beneath Mom’s dresser despite her warning that it will be a lean year.  The weekend before Christmas we pile into the Plymouth and drive to a tree lot beside Union Avenue Pharmacy, each offering opinions about shape, height, and needle length until Dad shouts “Just pick a godamn tree!”  Mom has Karla select one of the cheapest trees, complaining “Why’s he have to rush ya into getting that scraggly thing?”  Dad trims the trunk to fit it into our red and green stand, setting it up in the corner of the living room while hissing “Hush your mouth, it’s straight enough.”  He unwinds the line of little lights, cursing each burnt out bulb before replacing it and looping them up and down the tree.  She trims the branches with kitchen shears, snipping a wire to our hidden snickers on the down stairs and Dad’s “stupid sonovabitch.”  Then us three little kids layer on scratched bulbs and teardrops, red and blue chocolate balls, and strings of silver tinsel until the tree itself is nowhere to be seen.  It reappears the next morning as the decorations are rearranged in the night, some into order by our mother, others with red and blue foil into the yard by our dog Buff. 

 

PHOTO: Buff

 

            None of the glad tidings happen in the year of the ax.  It snows on December 1 and Dad, home early after his truck-driving trip is cancelled, drives up with a big grin and a tall Frazer fir strapped to the roof. 

 

“Why’d ya wanna get that thing so early?” greets Mom.

 

“C’mon kids, dig out the tree stand” he says, ignoring her first complaint.

 

“It’s dry as a bone” is the next volley while he shaves chips off the trunk.  “The needles’ll be all over the rug.”

 

“Where’s the real meaning of Christmas?” punctuates his wedging of the tree into the stand.

 

“I’ll not have that ugly thing in my house” is the last straw.

 

Each chop invokes the Christ and evokes a gasp.  After three blows we three kids slink away to our rooms to contemplate the end of Christmas.  The next three weeks pass without lights on the house, nativity on the TV, or mincemeat in the oven.  On Christmas eve Dad is down at Apgar’s fixing up trucks for a little extra cash.  Mom’s fiddling in the kitchen and fretting about not making it to church that night.  As dusk descends we hear scratching along the side of the house.  In comes our oldest brother Mickey dragging a beautiful big tree.  Bobby pops it into the stand, disappearing downstairs as Dad drives up.  He throws his coat in the closet and settles into his seat at the kitchen table for a silent supper.  Late that night our next oldest brother Alan arrives to take Mom and us kids to candlelight service at the Methodist Church.  The singing of O Holy Night at midnight has more than the usual melancholy in this year of no Christmas. 

 

Alan drives us home and we pile into the house to find a miracle:  The tree is decked with strings of many colored lights and dangling ornaments.  Mom reaches into the medicine cabinet and pulls out a red box of silver tinsel, handing it to Kathy before heading up to bed.

 

“Who fixed up the tree?” I ask, lying next to Karla on the living room floor watching the twinkling shadows of needles dancing around the ceiling.

 

“It must have been him” she concludes, “they’re strung up and down like he always does.”

 

“Will we get anything?” I wonder, thinking of the electric football set I’d circled in the Sears catalogue.

 

Karla whispers “We just did.”

 

PHOTO: Tinselled Tree