The season started with the appearance of the Montgomery Ward mail order catalog on our doorstep, from which I was permitted to select what I wanted from Santa. Said wish list was then taken to the basement and fed into an enormous coal furnace half the size of a Bessemer converter.
“Santa’s helpers will read your message in the smoke,” my mother explained.
In other words, it was a season of miracles, none more miraculous than the process by which my father would turn the homeliest evergreen into a picture perfect Christmas tree. He’d start by visiting the local tree lot, its ersatz showroom brightly lit and resonant with recorded Christas music. But no sooner would Dad examine the first price tag than in his mind’s ear the carols would give way to the skirl of ancestral bagpipes. At which point, he’d move on to the far corner of the lot, which was reserved for deeply discounted, misshapen irregulars. There, he’d set about fondling branches and kicking trunks until he found what he was looking for–a tree that needed a little work.
Mom often chided her husband for being cheap; however, when it came to Christmas trees she’d learned to reserve judgment. Likewise, his children, for we knew from experience that our father had an eye for inner beauty. Moreover, he was a shop teacher by trade, and thus knew his way around carpentry tools.
So, here’s how the miracle would transpire. Dad would drag the poor thing downstairs to his basement work bench and go to work, resetting broken limbs, drilling holes here and there and reassigning branches to fill bare spots. By the by the sawing and boring and hammering would cease and we’d hear footsteps coming up the stairs, a sound almost as thrilling as hearing hoofbeats on the roof.
Voila! Dad would appear holding the most beautiful Christmas tree you ever saw, even before we added lights, ornaments, and tons of sparkling tinsel. Come Christmas morning, I’d awake to find it ringed about with presents–including the one I’d ordered from Montgomery Ward via a smoke signal to Santa’s helpers.
Later on, I figured out just who those helpers were, but no matter, Christmas has remained a magical season for me–thanks largely to remembered rituals that made it so when I was a kid, none more magical that that which took place on my father’s work bench.
According to the poet Joyce Kilmer, only God can make a tree. My father never claimed to be God, but he sure did make wonderful trees.
