Tis the season to praise the pine.

 

I love Christmas trees. We bring the outdoors indoors to fill a home with Christmas cheer and spirit. I love to come downstairs in the morning to the refreshing scent of pine.

 

The Christmas tree is the holiday icon, like the turkey at Thanksgiving, the Easter Bunny at Easter and the blown off fingers on July 4th.

I have a forest full of childhood memories of going out and cutting down our family Christmas trees. We didn’t buy from a tree farm or roadside stand. Hell no. We ventured out into nature to hunt and harvest a trophy tree in its natural habitat, like our forefathers, foremothers, forekids and forepets.

 

Mom and Dad loaded us eight kids into the station wagon to begin the hunt, which basically consisted of driving around until we spotted a stand of likely trophy trees near the road.

 

I don’t know whose land we were on, if was public, private or a toxic waste dump. It seems like we just cut trees from most anywhere we pleased -- forests, fields, golf courses and city parks.

 

As the station wagon pulled over, someone yelled “release the hounds!” and we kids poured out of the wagon before it came to a stop. We ran and scattered about in the snow hoping to be the first to find the Perfect Pfiffer Pine (AKA, the “Three Pees.).” Dad carried a hand saw and Mom toted blankets for warmth, Kleenex for runny noses and Valiums in case she needed them if we kids got out of hand with Christmas joy.

 

We enjoyed the winter outing by throwing snowballs, making snow angles and writing our names in the snow, at least the boys did. The girls lacked the balance and agility.

 

Christmas tree hunting was an exciting tradition that tightened the family ties and created sweet lifetime memories. The crisp winter air filled with the sounds of childhood laughter, Christmas songs and my little sister yelling “Mom! Tell Jim to stop trying to put pinecones up my nose!”

 

Mom was too busy downing a Valium and warning us “Don’t eat the snow. It’s got radiation in it.” Apparently, back then, there were so many A-bomb tests that the radiation drifted into the atmosphere and somehow radiated things like snow and milk. Eventually one of us kids would find the PPP and shout the ocean whaling equivalent of “Thar she blows!” by singing out “I found the PPP!” (This was an appropriate bellow, as you will soon see, the Christmas tree was Dad's white whale). We gathered around the tree studying it, walking around it, measuring it, tugging branches and giving it a good shaking looking for loose needles. No Charlie Brown trees for us.

 

If it was the PPP, Dad crawled under it in the snow and sawed it down, a process that apparently was more difficult than we kids imagined. If the tree trunk was especially difficult to get to or to saw, Dad would encourage its cooperation with torrid strings of totally un-Christmas-like words and phrases that melted the snow, while mumbling something about Moby-Dick.

 

I remember the first time Dad let me crawl under the tree with him and saw it down, a proud rite of passage in our family. I’ll never forget it, because, in my haste to topple the mighty spruce, I nearly sawed off his fingers. I also remember it being the last time Dad asked me to saw the tree.

 

 

We dragged the tree to the station wagon and lashed it to the roof with clothesline. The ends of the rope were slammed shut in the rear doors, with kids holding them tight like straps in a crowded subway car. When we got home, we dragged the tree into the house and discovered that it had magically grown two feet taller. It wouldn’t fit in the living room. Dad called it a “Christmas miracle.” Mom called it “Told you to bring a tape measure,” as she filled a glass with water to help with the Valium.

 

Dad trimmed the tree to interior dimensions, took a few deep breaths and steeled himself for the dreaded battle with the tree stand, or what we called the “mano a pineno” fight to the finish.

 

Science has yet to invent a sturdy and user-friendly Christmas tree stand that actually does what it’s supposed to do: keep the tree straight and upright. Many of our crooked Christmas trees that were held upright by broom sticks, fishing line attached to furniture or simply pushed tightly into a corner for wall support.

 

Dad’s annual holiday battle with the tree stand brought about another recital of adjectives one would never read in a Hallmark card., but are common in Herman Melville novels.

 

If you think about it, the Christmas tree tradition is a bit creepy. Let’s pretend that an alien lands on Earth and witnesses the Pfiffer family tree hunt. This is what he would see:

 

A herd of swarming Earthlings hunt down and surround a helpless tree that can’t run away. They saw it off, at its only foot, and let it bleed out. Next, they unceremoniously drag it through mud and snow, insult it further by roping it to the roof of a primitive internal-combustion conveyance, exposed to the elements, propel the vehicle and take the tree to their home base, drag the tree into the domicile, saw it and cut it some more, only to then place it on a pedestal to be brightly decorated and honored for weeks WTF?

 

While it may be an unusual custom, I still love it. I can honestly say that all our Christmas tree expeditions were fun, exciting and memorable, except for one time when we had to take my sister to the emergency room because she somehow got pinecones up her nose.

 

Jim Pfiffer’s humor column is posted every Sunday on the Jim Pfiffer Facebook page, Hidden Landmarks TV Facebook page and TwinTiersLiving.com. Jim lives in Elmira with his wife, Shelley, and many pets and is a retired humor columnist with the Elmira Star-Gazette newspaper.