“Dad, who started the ‘dead tree’ tradition?” My eldest daughter called with the question as she watched her man thread live wires and bright bulbs onto the dead tree outside the door to their apartment. “I was trying to tell Bing about it and couldn’t remember who started it,” she said.
When we moved from California to Southern Indiana, Lisa’s mother and I bought a house offered in a “Home-a-rama,” a builder’s showcase of homes. We developed a good relationship with several families in the new neighborhood and collaborated with two of them to build a fence around our new homes. The collaboration was between an artist, an engineer and a business owner, who pooled resources to buy the raw materials for the fences. The engineer figured out how many 2x4s, 2x6s, how much posthole cement and how many pounds of galvanized nails three wise men would need; the business owner used his discount at the lumber store and the artist nodded and went in whatever direction the finger pointed.
Our first Christmas in the new house reinforced for us the friendliness of the neighborhood. I was able to convince some neighborhood kids to go caroling with me and Lisa. (Cathy did not carol.) As December turned into January and January slid into February, I felt no sense of urgency about the disposal of the dead Christmas tree in front of the gate to my yard. My neighbors kidded me, wondering why I was reluctant to part with the expired fir. I ignored them, and one day, just before Easter, the tree disappeared. I didn’t give it much thought, though, until Easter morning, when I looked out the front window to see the dead Christmas tree on the lawn, propped up and festooned with plastic Easter eggs. I knew immediately that our neighbors, Chip and Bev, had to be behind the offering.
It is not easy to keep a dead Christmas tree alive in your back yard for 8 months, but I did so; that December, I spray-painted the tree a bright green, and sent it back to Chip and Bev.
That dead Christmas tree kept alive the joy of giving for more than two years: it would show up in our front yard like the L.S. Ayres cherub, decorated with eggs or sprayed a bright green. It became a Halloween tree, an Easter tree and its default position, a Christmas tree. As it dried out, we would tape branches to the trunk. In the end, it was truly a “Charlie Brown Christmas tree.” I don’t remember which family — of the two of us — cracked first, but the tree finally went to its well-deserved rest.
As the father of her children bustles about, choosing trees, picking ornaments and lights and festooning the balcony with joy, my daughter remembers the shenanigans of her childhood. The dead tree in the front yard of their apartment building is decorated as lovingly as the fat fir in the living room, which is a fulsome tribute to the critical eye Bing trains on the choice. As Lisa said, “I told the kids that they might be going with dad to pick the tree, but trust me when I say that Bing will be picking the tree.” My grandchildren may not now appreciate the time and attention their father devotes to the celebration of the season, (except for the possibility of loot) but he is creating for his children a legacy and a memory.
It may not work for everyone, but the legend of — and the spirit of — the dead Christmas tree still works for my eldest daughter, who can chuckle with joy, still.