Thanksgiving Day and The Bellingham Herald reminds us that we are launched into the Holiday Season. The “tree” is a prominent part for most people, and I am again reminded how things have changed.
My first memory of our Christmas tree is when I was three years old and lived at 1800 Lake Street (now Lakeway Dr.). At that time (1925) there were just houses along Lake St., the side streets had few. The vast hillside behind was woods (mostly fir} except for a chicken farm at the top of the hill. Consequently, our trees came from that hillside. My father would go out and search for the perfect tree, cut it down and bring it home. Who the property owner was wasn’t an issue, there was so much forest land it didn’t matter.
Once in the house it was never just perfect and so my parents would use extra limbs from the bottom, bore holes in the trunk, filling in and making it “perfect.” Then we would all stand back and marvel at the symmetry and begin the decorating. Back then many trees were put up on Christmas Eve; ours always went up just one week before Christmas and was taken down on New Years Day. Our tree never had candles on it as some did; homes were heated with wood or coal stoves, and there was real concern about fire. The glass balls on our tree were very unique and special. Silver icicles were put on with tender care. It was always a thing of beauty and I would lay on the floor and watch it shimmer in the dusky light.
After my own home was established, we developed the tradition of always going out the Sunday after Thanksgiving with very good friends and their sons to a Christmas tree farm. We no longer had access to a hill that didn’t matter, and we would trudge around for a very long time looking for that “perfect” tree, leaving pieces of Kleenex on various branches of “maybes.” We often laughed when we found ourselves back where we began with our first choice. Since we maintained the tradition of “putting up the week before Christmas” the tree would be taken home, put in a bucket of water and tied to the clothesline pole. Came the time that we were bringing home 3 trees to take care of the grandparent’s homes.
As my husband’s health became more fragile, we knew we couldn’t continue all the things we had been doing like making garlands from fresh greens around the front door and the arches on our porch, and so we went to a wholesale house in Seattle and bought artificial greens for that. We looked at the artificial trees, found one that looked like a silver fir, but decided “not yet.” I continued to go on the tree hunting journey and friends put up the live tree for us. The year my husband died, the friends put it up for me.
Real transition! When I moved from the home we had lived in for 40 years I knew I had to let go of the “green smell.” I did find a “perfect” small, thin silver fir, that fit just right in my new home. I didn’t have to cut it but I could put it up. Also gave up the silver icicles because my husband was the one who had patiently placed them “just right” for 47 years. I stylized it to be a Victorian tree to fit into my new cottage home.
I have moved again this year, an apartment is my home. There is the perfect place for the Victorian tree; this year someone else will put it up for me, but I will decorate it. The lights are groups of 3 small electrically lit candles. There will be one item on the tree that was mine way back at 1800 Lake St, a tiny German Dresden doll, dressed in white baby clothes, placed in a place of honor. This year I will sit in my rocker and watch it all shimmer in the dusky light of a fireplace that actually functions with a 40 watt light bulb.
Yes, trees have changed and so have I, but my tree still goes up about a week and a half before Christmas. I am not ready to let go the day the presents have been unwrapped, it comes down when there are primroses to put on my dining room table, the week following New Years. The week between Christmas and New Years is when I like to entertain; that is the way it used to be and you hadn’t been doing it all since Thanksgiving. I am older, but the thrill of Christmas is still mine to hold and to cherish; it is a celebration of a day that transformed history.
Written by:
Geneil Chevalier
Congratulations to the winners of our November drawing. Jon Santos, Laurine Tilbury, and Sue Johnson have each won a $75 gift certificate for a party platter from Haggen. Jon was very excited about the news!
