Picking out our Christmas tree every year was always a major ordeal. Unbeknownst to us kids, it was Dad's job to take us out tree-shopping so Mom could sort and wrap the Christmas presents. It was her way of making sure we were out of the house for an extended period of time and that Dad did something towards Christmas preparations. But that wasn't the part that was the ordeal.
The ordeal came because no matter what, Dad and us girls never, ever picked out a tree that suited Mom. That is until we came up with the idea for the Christmas tree lunch.
When we were very young, we would go to a nearby fruit and vegetable stand called "Jigg's." Jigg's sold produce in the summer, pumpkins in the fall, and Christmas trees in the winter. After Christmas, Jigg's would close up shop until spring. The stand was on the way to church and school, and I always knew Christmas was coming when those triangle-shaped stands went up right before Thanksgiving.
There were always a couple of dozen trees hanging in the stands as well as a nearby pile to choose from if the ones hanging up didn't work. We'd walk through the rows, looking at the merits of each tree, turning it to check for bare spots, making sure the trunk wasn't crooked, measuring the height. It had to be about 7 feet tall and a douglas fir. Mom liked that kind best because the branches were sturdy enough to hold the lights and spaced far enough apart to showcase the ornaments.
We would look and look, and I always felt bad passing by the ones that didn't measure up, until we finally found the right tree. The worker would saw the bottom off and rope it to the roof of the car, and we'd head home anxious to show Mom this year's tree.
But every year, there was something...it was too short or there was a bare spot or the trunk was crooked...It didn't matter that once the lights and decorations got on, it would look great. The imperfections just screamed at her, and that's all she could see.
Finally one year, after an argument because we'd brought home a tree that was so short we had to place it on milk crates covered with a sheet to make it tall enough, Mom suggested that next time we go to the tree stand in the Consolidated parking lot. "You need to go to more than one place!" she said. "You need to SPEND SOME TIME looking for a tree!"
So the next year, we skipped Jigg's and headed over to Consolidated to see what their trees looked like. We looked and looked. Up and down row after row until we couldn't remember where we saw a tree that might have worked. Finally, we found one that maybe had a bare spot or maybe a crooked trunk, but we didn't care. We'd been looking for a Christmas tree for a couple of hours. We were cold and hungry and just wanted to go home.
When we pulled it off the top of the car and showed it to Mom, she still wasn't satisfied even thought we'd gotten the tree from the lot she suggested. My dad just shook his head and mumbled something under his breath and plunked the tree down in a bucket of water until we could get it inside to decorate.
At some point the next fall, my mom and dad were enjoying an evening with a couple they were friends with, when Mom and the other dad hatched a plan for the dads to take all of us kids over to Indiana to cut down our own tree. We all thought that was a great idea! Visions of trekking through the snowy woods and finding the ultimate Christmas tree illuminated by a single sunbeam permeated my every thought.
On the appointed Saturday, we loaded into a leisure van my dad had borrowed from one of the Chevrolet dealers he knew, and we drove over to Indiana. This was not a Christmas tree farm in today's sense of the word. This was a farm that had an occasional Christmas tree-type of tree on it that we could cut down. We piled out of the car, the dads carrying axes, and headed into the woods to find "the tree," but all we could find were cedar trees, and we knew Mom wouldn't go for that at all. We hiked and hiked, and it was cold. I don't think we were even on the tree farm property at this point, but finally we found a tree that we thought would work. It was nice and full and had a straight trunk and no bare spots, so we claimed it as ours. Our friends found a tree too, and Dad and Mr. B proceeded to cut them both down.
Did you know that a tree out in the woods looks a lot smaller than it is in real life?
We hauled that tree back to where we parked, but we couldn't get it in the van. It was too tall. We got our friends' tree loaded onto their car, but ours wouldn't fit. And as we tried one way and then another, the back window broke out of that borrowed van when someone tried to close the rear door and hit the trunk of the tree.
Needless to say that Dad was the unhappy one that year.
So, Jigg's was out. Consolidated didn't work. Cutting down our own tree, while scoring us a great tree, also incurred a broken van window, so that was a no-go. It seemed like nothing we did worked. We'd never find a tree that was the perfect tree.
The next year, with a sense of dread but a determination to make Mom happy, we piled in the car and headed out yet again.
"Where are we going this year?" one of my sisters asked.
"It doesn't matter where we go," I said, "we will never get the perfect tree."
The gravel crunched under our tires, as we pulled into Jigg's for the umpteenth year and tumbled out of the car to look. And right away, we found a pretty good tree. Not too tall, not too short, not too many bare spots, fairly straight trunk...So we bought it.
There was just one problem...If we went home already, Mom was sure to find something wrong with the tree, and then she'd tell us that we hadn't shopped in enough lots or spent enough time looking at trees...
So after we tied the tree to the roof of the car, Dad said, "Well, we can't go home yet. Want to go to lunch?"
And that's how our Christmas tree shopping tradition started. We'd go to one lot, pick out a tree, and then go to lunch. Sometimes we'd go to McDonalds, but we usually went to Mr. Gatti's so we could each get that personal sized pizza we so loved. We'd even park in the back in the off-chance that Mom would be driving down Dixie Highway and see our car parked out front and wonder what the heck we were doing at Mr. Gatti's. When we came home, we'd tell Mom that we looked all over and finally, FINALLY found this tree. And you know what? She usually loved them! We had found the recipe for the perfect tree. It had nothing to do with bare spots or straight trunks. It had everything to do with spending the right amount of time looking for the perfect tree that made it so.
We didn't tell Mom for years. In fact, I think I was well into my late 20s or early 30s before we finally spilled the beans. She was not amused. But those days of the Christmas tree lunches are some of my favorite memories, and I wouldn't trade them for the most perfect tree in the world.
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