Alexxus Entertainment: The Last Christmas Tree

The Last Christmas Tree

In the summer of 1970 my family moved from our home along the banks of the Mississippi river to a small town in western Ohio called Celina. The disguise for the move was that there was a construction boom going on in that area and a lot of opportunities were available for my father, a bricklayer. But in actuality, my parents’ marriage was faltering and this was a last attempt, away from the pressures of family and friends, to make it work.

Celina was a different kind of town, part small town USA with its flat, straight Main Street that featured a movie theater, local diners and a JC Penney store, and part summer tourist town with its proximity to the edge of the Grand Lake St. Mary’s, touted as Ohio’s largest man made lake.

Within months we had settled into our small, cottage like home along the lake and made friends with many of our neighbors.

Summer turned into fall and soon the Christmas season was upon us. Now this is where one of the differences of my parents always came to light. My mother was a holiday lover: Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, even Labor Day and Memorial Day. There were always decorations to be displayed, a family gathering to arrange or a picnic to be planned. My father was quite the opposite. A holiday for him meant nothing more than an opportunity to get an extra day to accomplish things at home or take in a football game on television. A man maybe ahead of his time, he believed Christmas to be nothing more than a money making holiday for commercial stores. Because of the expense of the recent move he was not even sure if a Christmas tree would be affordable.

So our new neighbors and friends - well, at least the twelvish year olds –came to our rescue. It seems that there had been a tree nursery just blocks from our home that was vacated when the town started to grow east, and we were assured by our wise but pre-teen friends that it was perfectly okay to cut one of the many pine trees down to utilize for a Christmas tree (but years later I came to question that if it was perfectly okay, then why did we wait until well after sunset to do it).

It was just a couple of weeks before Christmas day when I set out by myself to survey the nursery for that perfect Christmas tree. After combing numerous rows I found it. Approximately six feet tall, this scotch pine was round, full and almost had seemed manicured for the picking. I made a mental note of its location and would come back later in the evening, along with my brother and friends, to fetch the prize.

It was hours later when we returned and, now in the dark of the night, I could not locate the tree. After numerous laps through the nursery my brother grew impatient and suggested we settle for another tree but I was insistent on the beauty that I had seen earlier in the day.

In disgust my brother found yet another tree and asked, again, “What about this one?”

“That’s it!” I exclaimed as I feasted my eyes on the wondrous piece of nature I had spotted only hours earlier. So from under our jackets emerged saws of every shape and size as we took to separating that perfect Christmas tree from the roots that had given it life. And then, in almost a tag team effort, we took turns dragging that tree on the long journey to our home to perch in its stand.

My mother was overjoyed. My father in disbelief. He resigned himself to the tree and issued the decree – there would be no more than one box of Christmas ornaments and one string of lights purchased for that thing!

Still, mother was undaunted. The Christmas tree of 1970 would become our first ever hand crafted decoration project. Although we did have a few meager bulbs and minimal lights on the tree the rest was decorated with hand made items and clever ideas. We made a paper chain from green and red construction paper and strung it around the tree. Each time my mother would open up a can of soup or vegetables she kept the tin lids. We would take them, paint a red or green border on the outside edges, attach a Christmas label to the center and hang it on the tree as an ornament. And every time my mother would go to the grocery store she would slip a box of candy canes in the cart, and those of course made their way to the yuletide centerpiece. We were awed at its beauty when completed!

And to complete the magic, in Celina, Ohio on Christmas day in 1970, it snowed, giving us a perfect white Christmas!

But our “perfect” days would soon come to an end.

By early 1971 it was apparent that the end of the road had come for my parents’ marriage. First my mother returned home to Dubuque with my sister and in July my brother, father and I packed up our belongings and returned as well. And although they divorced it was very amicable and we were given the freedom to go back and forth and live with each of them. And as our childhood turned into teen and then early adult days, we would sometimes reminisce about Christmases past and it was always the consensus that the Christmas tree in Ohio was the most beautiful one we ever had.

It would be 29 years before I would return to Celina again. My wife had relatives who lived in Columbus and on a trip to visit, I opted to skip out of a day of shopping and instead made the one hundred mile trip back to the place I briefly called home. It’s funny how sometimes I cannot remember a name, a face, or even where I just had set my keys down, but making the trip back to Celina was effortless, like I had just been there yesterday. As I rolled into town I located the street where we used to live and made my way down. The house that we had lived in had been one of several removed to make way for a bigger, more elaborate home, but the neighbors who lived across the street from us all those years ago were still there. I found the school that I had attended, met a woman at a convenience store who I discovered was the daughter-in-law to one of my father’s old friends, had lunch at a local diner, and, before leaving, searched out the spot where the nursery had once been. The land was now developed and held many homes. I parked my car where the entrance of the nursery used to be, and as I looked down the street. It struck me how the distance from there to the spot where our home used to be, which seemed like miles years ago, only appeared to be a number of blocks now. In my mind I could still see us yet, my brother, our friends and I dragging that huge tree to our house, with a light on the back porch that seemed to tease us that it was closer than it really was. And that’s when I had the epiphany that maybe equaled that of the Grinches on the top of Mt. Crumpit: Maybe it wasn't the natural beauty of that tree at all that made it our all time favorite. Maybe it had nothing to do with the shape or the fullness or whatever. Maybe that tree, in our memory, was the most glorious one we ever had because of the love and the care and the giving of ourselves we undertook to make it beautiful. Maybe it was because it was the last Christmas tree that we would ever gather around as a complete family and at the time we all subliminally knew that. And that’s the real reason why it was remembered so fondly.

All of the family members have moved on now. Marriage and careers have taken my siblings and father to other parts of the country. And in the infant days of 2002, my mother passed on to, hopefully, a more peaceful place. Only I am left to walk the streets of Dubuque, which at one time we all called home, and I have inherited the love of the holidays from my mother. Now, as my wife and I raise our own children, hopefully I am helping give them Christmases as memorable, but not as bittersweet, as mine are with the Last Christmas Tree.