Cold, No Snow, Trees

Greetings from the early days of December, where it is finally, genuinely cold. What we call cold around here anyway.

My desk is just to the right of the front door, which no one uses, and there’s a window next to the door that I look out. But it’s cracked and leaks cold air. It’s 26 degrees F outside. There’s a good chance it’s colder wherever you are, but here in South Carolina, that counts as cold.

It’s strange how relative temperature is though — there were days when I lived in Massachusetts when 26 F would count as warm. Cold depends on what you’re used to. Most things depend on what you’re used to. Habit is a force to be reckoned with.

I should really do something about the cracked window. The wafts of arctic air are terrible for the monthly electric bill. Right now though, I rather enjoy it. The cold keeps me more awake, gives me that slight discomfort that reminds you you’re a human, in a body. Best not to forget that.

Earlier today I did something I have never done in my forty-five years of living: I cut down my own Christmas tree.

It was like temporarily living in a Norman Rockwell painting. We traipsed through the forest in search of an appropriate tree. There was no snow, but it was suitably cold at least. We ended up cutting down a tree much larger than we needed and then just using the top. Small trees turn out to be scraggly things, unless they’re spruce or fir, neither of which grow around here.

It sounds simple enough when I write it, but imagine it would have been hilarious to watch.

The only hand saw I have is a mitre saw, which is terrible for cutting down trees. It took an embarrassingly long time to get through a 6-inch diameter tree trunk. Then you’d have seen us dragging and pulling, grunting and sweating our way out of the forest and back to the house where we quickly realized it was still far too large. We have 12-foot ceilings here, but even with that I had to go back at it with the saw, taking off another foot or two from the base.

Then we dragged it in the front door and tried to stand it up only to realize it was still way too tall. I cut another foot off right in the living room, sawdust piling on the floor. Tried to stand it up again. Still too tall. Sigh. More sawdust.

Eventually we got it down to size, but it’s still so tall I can’t reach the top of it.

Somewhere in the midst of all that sawing I started wondering how it was we ended up cutting down trees for Christmas anyway. Rituals that involve destruction of the natural environment around you tend to make for short-lived civilizations. Just ask an Easter Islander.

It turns out Christmas trees are a relatively recent ritual. At least cutting them down. That habit was imported by the Germans about 150 years ago. Decorating with evergreen boughs — a more sustainable approach — goes all the way back to Greek times, possibly further. Of course the Greeks were celebrating the Winter Solstice, not Christmas.

Massachusetts, place of bitter cold and, historically, bitterness, once outlawed any Christmas celebration other than a church service. A win for sustainability and trees, but a loss for, well, everything else. People were fined for hanging evergreens or decorating in any way. Because who wants all that joy around them? Not Massachusettians of days past. Christmas trees were too much fun for Puritans. Or maybe they just hated trudging out in the woods to get one. There were witches in those woods.

We don’t have any witches in our woods. So far as I have been able to observe anyway. Still, I wonder about these rituals we stumble through. I suspect they’re far more important than we give them credit for. These stories we tell ourselves about ourselves shape us, they determine our behavior, our destiny to some degree, perhaps to a large degree. They feel like the kinds of things we should spend more time considering, but we don’t. Or I don’t. Not often anyway.

That’s what gives them their power. Those stories are there, shaping our existence whether we stop to consider them or not. For me it usually takes something to jar me into questioning my habits, like being tired of wrestling with a tree. Why are we dragging a dead tree inside the house? Why am I sawing again? What are we doing out in this forest full of witches in the (relative) freezing cold?