We set off again for “Up Nort” in the UP for Thanksgiving break, a time when all the deer had most probably vanished deeply into the forest after the opening of the season the weekend before. With difficulty, we got ‘Loaded for Bear,’ my son eagerly awaiting his first big-game kill, and me almost, kinda hoping we got nothing. To my way of thinking, deer hunting is so regulated and the out-of-state licenses so expensive that it is better left to the rich and foolish, but we attached the baggage rack to the Jeep just the same and motored up in the gloom of late November. Once there, the gloom continued, aided by a constant flurry of Lake Effect snow that drifted slowly but relentlessly onto the six inches already on the ground. We attended the outhouse, got our gear set for early morning, and I, by tradition, opened the first beer to while away the quiet, lightless hours of the late-season evening out beyond the grid.
I should like to report that we shot and then tracked a 12-point buck through the darkening forest, got lost for the night after finding it panting and panicked, and then barely made it back at pewter-colored dawn, our adventure set for all time. That, however, would be a lie - not my first, but one so bad that not even the evening news would have the chutzpa to repeat it. No. Rather, we froze our pattooties off for nothing, and then, on the last morning, packed up early to beat the threat of a large storm just begun, threatening to bring down another six inches and the possibility that we would be stuck until God knows when – with the beer supply almost gone.
My son, however, would not have us return with the back-rack empty. “Hey Dad, why don’t we cut a Christmas tree on the way out and avoid the supply chain mess?” “But,” said I, wanting nothing more than to get back to roads that were plowed, “we really have to get out of here. Anyway, we’d have to search for an hour to find a good one. Forget about it.”
Of course he did not, and as we crunched and slid down the two-track from the cabin, he pointed to one small, spindly tree by the side of the trail. “It will only take a minute with the chainsaw,” he said, to which I replied, “and half an hour to wrap and tie it down,” but my voice of reason was quickly lost. The tree, maybe not so terribly bad after all, would be ours to bring in the birthday of Mankind’s savior king.
We arrived home well after dark, and all I wanted to do was unload the baggage and check my e-mail, but noooooo - Jeff would have us trim the tree and set it up. He did do the preliminary decorating, though, and afterwards it didn’t look too bad, at least not as bad as the cedar we had cut off our property the year before in the midst of the Covid crises, when I had to attach additional boughs to the tree with duct tape to give it at least a little character.
So, OK, we had saved seventy bucks by not shooting a buck and instead taking a tree, and the tree was off our own northern property, so what the heck. The lights strung from its slender branches shown in the shadows of night, and all seemed at least kind of well. Until the next morning.
When you buy a tree off the lot, it arrives cold and stiff at the house, smaller than expected, until it has time to warm. The boughs then lower and, usually, the tree seems to be much fuller. But not this one. With this little spruce, what little body it had was completely lost as the boughs drooped to indoor-heating level. While the tree had not been glorious the night before, the morning surprised me with the sparsest, ugliest tree that I had ever seen in any home that I had lived in, from the age I started to remember things to the present.
“Holy crap,” I uttered to myself. My first thought was to take off the lights and ornaments and chuck the thing out the front door, where it would dwindle into total nothingness in a matter of weeks. But no. For Jeff, even after he became fully awake, it was not so bad, no, and besides, it had come off our property - and besides too, thought I, it had also become a substitute for your buck, the tiny limbs an acceptable alternative to a massive rack. I had to laugh at the situation in the dark way that we old people do because of our so many defeats in life, and then said, “Oh well. It’s gonna be a Charlie Brown Christmas Tree for us this year.”
“What,” said Jeff, “is a Charlie Brown Christmas Tree? I saw the cartoon like, twenty years ago, but I don’t remember.”
“What the …? That’s un-American!,” I exclaimed with horror, and then went on to expound – expounding on small things is what do best – on just what a Charlie Brown Christmas tree is.
We remember it, don’t we? There was to be a Christmas nativity play at the grammar school, back in 1965 when such plays were possible, and Charlie “Blockhead” Brown was picked by bossy Lucy to get the tree, as he could do little else. Charlie was not stupid, but depressed from a world he saw as hard and unfair. He always had to side with the underdog, so of course he almost always lost, marking him out from all his peers as The Looser. And so it was at the Christmas tree lot. There, amid the normal trees, was one scraggly little one that cried out for attention and care. Of course Charlie bought it, and of course the kids were appalled that this spindly little tree would be up there on stage with them as one of the centers for their school play.
Charlie Brown became even more depressed, of course, until the day of the glorious play itself. Then Linus, the thumb-sucking philosopher in the bunch, proclaimed that maybe the tree wasn’t so bad at all. Maybe, in fact, Charlie Brown was right, and all it needed was a little love. So the kids dropped their contempt for Charlie and his tree and set out to make it full and beautiful, which they did as one can only do in make-believe. Later, the play went on with all the shepherds and wise men and Mary and Jesus, until it came time for Linus to speak, playing what looked to be the smallest and most vulnerable of the shepherds:
“…And the angel said to them, Fear not: for behold, / I bring you good tidings of great joy, /which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, / which is Christ the Lord…/
“And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, / Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will towards men.” (From Luke, chap. 2, St James Bible)
Thus spoke Dad, with a butchered version of ‘Luke’ as written above, and then the most amazing thing happened. Instead of a snort or a casual shrug or rebuff from our worldly son, he said, “You know, that’s right. All it needs is love to bring out its beauty.” And this said with complete sincerity, as if he were discovering a truth that had been hidden within him for years. Could the author of the cartoon and the play, Charles Schultz, wish for anything more? Could the meaning of Christmas be understood any more clearly?
Of course the tree remains just as ugly as before, but good Lord, could anyone be given a better family legacy through any Christmas tree? For there, as Linus understood, stands a mere plant in all its poverty and want that speaks for what we need most and all that we could wish for.
We set off again for “Up Nort” in the UP for Thanksgiving break, a time when all the deer had most probably vanished deeply into the forest after the opening of the season the weekend before. With difficulty, we got ‘Loaded for Bear,’ my son eagerly awaiting his first big-game kill, and me almost, kinda hoping we got nothing. To my way of thinking, deer hunting is so regulated and the out-of-state licenses so expensive that it is better left to the rich and foolish, but we attached the baggage rack to the Jeep just the same and motored up in the gloom of late November. Once there, the gloom continued, aided by a constant flurry of Lake Effect snow that drifted slowly but relentlessly onto the six inches already on the ground. We attended the outhouse, got our gear set for early morning, and I, by tradition, opened the first beer to while away the quiet, lightless hours of the late-season evening out beyond the grid.
I should like to report that we shot and then tracked a 12-point buck through the darkening forest, got lost for the night after finding it panting and panicked, and then barely made it back at pewter-colored dawn, our adventure set for all time. That, however, would be a lie - not my first, but one so bad that not even the evening news would have the chutzpa to repeat it. No. Rather, we froze our pattooties off for nothing, and then, on the last morning, packed up early to beat the threat of a large storm just begun, threatening to bring down another six inches and the possibility that we would be stuck until God knows when – with the beer supply almost gone.
My son, however, would not have us return with the back-rack empty. “Hey Dad, why don’t we cut a Christmas tree on the way out and avoid the supply chain mess?” “But,” said I, wanting nothing more than to get back to roads that were plowed, “we really have to get out of here. Anyway, we’d have to search for an hour to find a good one. Forget about it.”
Of course he did not, and as we crunched and slid down the two-track from the cabin, he pointed to one small, spindly tree by the side of the trail. “It will only take a minute with the chainsaw,” he said, to which I replied, “and half an hour to wrap and tie it down,” but my voice of reason was quickly lost. The tree, maybe not so terribly bad after all, would be ours to bring in the birthday of Mankind’s savior king.
We arrived home well after dark, and all I wanted to do was unload the baggage and check my e-mail, but noooooo - Jeff would have us trim the tree and set it up. He did do the preliminary decorating, though, and afterwards it didn’t look too bad, at least not as bad as the cedar we had cut off our property the year before in the midst of the Covid crises, when I had to attach additional boughs to the tree with duct tape to give it at least a little character.
So, OK, we had saved seventy bucks by not shooting a buck and instead taking a tree, and the tree was off our own northern property, so what the heck. The lights strung from its slender branches shown in the shadows of night, and all seemed at least kind of well. Until the next morning.
When you buy a tree off the lot, it arrives cold and stiff at the house, smaller than expected, until it has time to warm. The boughs then lower and, usually, the tree seems to be much fuller. But not this one. With this little spruce, what little body it had was completely lost as the boughs drooped to indoor-heating level. While the tree had not been glorious the night before, the morning surprised me with the sparsest, ugliest tree that I had ever seen in any home that I had lived in, from the age I started to remember things to the present.
“Holy crap,” I uttered to myself. My first thought was to take off the lights and ornaments and chuck the thing out the front door, where it would dwindle into total nothingness in a matter of weeks. But no. For Jeff, even after he became fully awake, it was not so bad, no, and besides, it had come off our property - and besides too, thought I, it had also become a substitute for your buck, the tiny limbs an acceptable alternative to a massive rack. I had to laugh at the situation in the dark way that we old people do because of our so many defeats in life, and then said, “Oh well. It’s gonna be a Charlie Brown Christmas Tree for us this year.”
“What,” said Jeff, “is a Charlie Brown Christmas Tree? I saw the cartoon like, twenty years ago, but I don’t remember.”
“What the …? That’s un-American!,” I exclaimed with horror, and then went on to expound – expounding on small things is what do best – on just what a Charlie Brown Christmas tree is.
We remember it, don’t we? There was to be a Christmas nativity play at the grammar school, back in 1965 when such plays were possible, and Charlie “Blockhead” Brown was picked by bossy Lucy to get the tree, as he could do little else. Charlie was not stupid, but depressed from a world he saw as hard and unfair. He always had to side with the underdog, so of course he almost always lost, marking him out from all his peers as The Looser. And so it was at the Christmas tree lot. There, amid the normal trees, was one scraggly little one that cried out for attention and care. Of course Charlie bought it, and of course the kids were appalled that this spindly little tree would be up there on stage with them as one of the centers for their school play.
Charlie Brown became even more depressed, of course, until the day of the glorious play itself. Then Linus, the thumb-sucking philosopher in the bunch, proclaimed that maybe the tree wasn’t so bad at all. Maybe, in fact, Charlie Brown was right, and all it needed was a little love. So the kids dropped their contempt for Charlie and his tree and set out to make it full and beautiful, which they did as one can only do in make-believe. Later, the play went on with all the shepherds and wise men and Mary and Jesus, until it came time for Linus to speak, playing what looked to be the smallest and most vulnerable of the shepherds:
“…And the angel said to them, Fear not: for behold, / I bring you good tidings of great joy, /which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, / which is Christ the Lord…/
“And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, / Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will towards men.” (From Luke, chap. 2, St James Bible)
Thus spoke Dad, with a butchered version of ‘Luke’ as written above, and then the most amazing thing happened. Instead of a snort or a casual shrug or rebuff from our worldly son, he said, “You know, that’s right. All it needs is love to bring out its beauty.” And this said with complete sincerity, as if he were discovering a truth that had been hidden within him for years. Could the author of the cartoon and the play, Charles Schultz, wish for anything more? Could the meaning of Christmas be understood any more clearly?
Of course the tree remains just as ugly as before, but good Lord, could anyone be given a better family legacy through any Christmas tree? For there, as Linus understood, stands a mere plant in all its poverty and want that speaks for what we need most and all that we could wish for.
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