Becoming a Christmas Tree
All the other trees, many the same age as me, talked excitedly about becoming Christmas trees. Slowly each year, one by one or in great bunches, my forest mates had all been taken away. None of those magnificent trees had ever come back to tell me what it was really like. Long ago deciding I was too short and stumpy, my branches were too crooked and misshapen I knew I would never be the kind of Christmas tree rumored on the forest breezes. I started to give up. But one cold, snowy winter, I finally paid attention to all the chatter around me about being a Christmas tree.
All the stories were only rumors, you know, gathered from small families of humans that came to the forest to get their own trees. The words 'warm and dry’, with just a drink of water every now and then, certainly caught my attention. I didn’t think I’d care for all the folderol of tinsel and lights and bright coloured balls, but maybe they were lighter than the heavy snows that I had to put up with each winter. But I did think I was just fine the way I was, thank you very much. The words, 'warm and dry', haunted me. Maybe I would be chosen the next time.
***
“Hey Joe! What about this one? Should we leave it? Doesn’t look like much more than firewood to me.”
“Nope, we’re supposed to take everything. They can figure out what to do with it. We just cut’em.”
A fierce buzzing, loud creak then thunk were deafening sounds in the snowy quietness. I was next and it ended my life as I had known it for so long. Where there had been hundreds of us, evergreen trees of all shapes and sizes, a broad swath stretched through the ever dwindling forest. I was the last tree cut and then thrown, quite unceremoniously I might add, onto the top of the load of pines and spruce trees on what I know now is a flat bed truck.
And now look at me. If you can. Down here, at the bottom of a pile of lush, soft green trees. All shapes and sizes of humans come in here pawing through us all. When human hands find me, always by accident, they think I am part of some other much handsomer tree. At first they’d pull at me and then I'd be let go in disgust when they saw how bent my branches were.
The words I’ve heard!
The very worst? “Firewood – that’s all it’s good for.” I heard that over and over! I never wanted to even be singed! I just wanted to be warm and dry – not burned to ashes! After all I’ve gone through, I deserve a decorated life too.
Then this: “Well that’s a charley brown Christmas tree if I ever saw one.” - not that I knew what that meant. It was the tone of voice that made me suspicious.
And: “Someone will buy him – someone with no sense and too many decorations."
Another rudely said: “Our room is far too grand for that ugly old stump. I don’t even know why they’ve kept it in this lot.”
The only good thing about being on the bottom of the heap was that at least I didn’t have nasty crows and filthy seagulls sitting on me when the humans were away. Occasionally some dog would have the audacity to sidle up to me, lift his leg and let go a yellow dribble on me! The best times were when a cat or another small furry creature would nestle into my thin branches. Then I did get a bit of warmth.
Oh, I do wish these humans would just get on with it. These heaps and heaps of young trees piled on top of me are heavy! Do today’s young trees have no respect for their elders? I really don’t know why I thought it would be any different here away from the forest. After all that standing up to my branches in snow in the forest, my needles getting sopping wet in rain, and birds relieving themselves on my branches. I seem to be in the same fix here!
****
Finally. I’m alone in the Christmas tree lot, lights still blinking over the sign that announced in big bold letters: ‘Fresh cut Christmas trees!’ Fresh! Hmph! I’ve been lying here in this muck for a month. All the others have gone and here I am – cold and lonely, with my bare trunk exposed for all to the cold night air. Soggy branches on one side and drying up on top! My branches feel stiffer and colder with each incredibly slow day. Being fire wood is beginning to sound good.
And the little humans - children I believe they're called. And I do wish this child would stop crying. He’s dripping salt water all over me. He’s holding my top branch so tight he’s going to take all my few remaining needles off!
‘Get that kid away from me!’ There was no wind to make me talk, so my plea was merely a thought.
Then I heard a soft voice reminding me of a light spring breeze in the forest: “OK sweetie, he’s really not much! I don’t know what your dad’s going to think. You know what he said. He wanted a tall, bushy tree and this one is short and stumpy.”
But I was picked up out of the muck anyway. It felt so good to at last to have the dirty half-melted snow shaken onto the ground. I could hear my branches sigh with relief as the young mother tucked me in the back of the little family’s beat up old car. My branches began to relax, and my crooked trunk lay on a soft blanket in the warmth of the old car, my topknot between the seats in front. The little child was no longer crying, thank goodness. One chubby little hand clutched the unruly twig at my very top. In old car’s warmth, I suddenly felt like a decorated Christmas tree. With this new found angel at my crown, we fell asleep together.
"Life is so constructed that an event does not,
cannot, will not, match the expectation."
~ Charlotte Bronte
Thirty-five years ago 
