On Christmas Trees and Vacuums

’Tis the season for putting up Christmas trees. My husband and I have not yet purchased our tree this year, but, as he says, we are “closing in on it.” Which is another way of saying “it’s on my radar screen.” Which are both military-speak for “I’m thinking about it, and it might happen in the next month.”

We have always had live Christmas trees. Or, should I say, trees that were recently alive, before they were cut and shipped to some store like Home Depot. Most of the time, our trees are close enough to life to still drink water, once we have cut off the bottom slice.

But our trees are never as fresh as the one my daughter got this year. She lives in Washington State, and she and her boyfriend decided to get a tree from a National Forest. For ten dollars, one can get a permit to cut down a live tree.

Most people get their National Forest trees from somewhere right off the road. But my daughter’s boyfriend, an avid back-country skier, determined that there were better trees to be had by skiing into the wilderness. And so they did.

With him on skis and my daughter in snowshoes they found what they wanted. When I asked what made this The Perfect Tree, my daughter said, “It was near the road and an appropriate height.”

Though, as it turned out, they had to lop some of the bottom off to make it fit, so the height wasn’t perfect.

And “near the road” was relative. They traveled 2.4 miles off-road to get the tree, with 800 feet of vertical climb. And then had to travel back to the car with the tree strapped to boyfriend’s back.

Still, her house now looks more festive than mine.

Live trees do require a fair amount of maintenance. There is daily watering. Sometimes twice daily, depending on the relative humidity in the air and the proclivity of the tree to soak up moisture.

Then there is cleaning up the needles that fall. This is particularly a problem when bringing the tree into the house and again when removing it. But even while the tree just sits there, it sheds needles.

Which reminds me of a story about my daughter when she was quite young.

The year she was two, we had just set up our Christmas tree or taken it down, I forget which. It dropped needles all over the floor between the door and the room where we set it up. So I got out the vacuum and started clean up when we were done messing with the tree.

“What’s THAT???” toddler daughter demanded in consternation, her accusing index finger pointing at the vacuum.

She had never seen one of those roaring monsters before.

I was as shocked as she was. How could a two-year-old not know what a vacuum was?

But then I realized—she had started going to a day care center when she was three months old. Our cleaning service always cleaned our house during the day when my husband and I were working and the kids were in day care. Maybe she never had seen a vacuum before, and she almost definitely had never seen her mother operate one.

But I swear, our home was reasonably clean. And anyway, it’s decades too late for the Division of Family Services to investigate my housekeeping practices now.

What stories does your family tell about Christmas trees?