Last Sunday, my big brother, David, and I went out to get a Christmas tree.
It wasn’t the classic holiday experience; our entire family didn’t drive up into the mountains near his Colorado home and trudge through the powdery snow with a saw and a sled looking for the perfect pine.
Actually, my brother and I were the only ones willing to leave the cozy nest. This year, my immediate family rendezvoused for Thanksgiving in Wheat Ridge. There, all weekend long, young and old were quite content snuggled inside the toasty house with football on the television or a book in hand and a fridge full of serious leftovers just a room away.
My brother, whose job as a landscape architect keeps him neurotically busy, needs to fit everything personal into his rare days off of work. As much as he and I wanted to head to the snowy hills for the ideal White Christmas moment, there just wasn’t time. So we pointed his Subaru towards the next, best option – the local nursery selling freshly cut trees.
“That was the best job I ever had,” I told David as we inched our way through the weekend traffic.
“Yeah,” he agreed, knowing exactly what I was talking about without me having to say it. “Everyone was always in such a great mood.”
For both of us, Christmas tree lots bring back fond memories.
For many years, my brother and I were part of the Tannenbaum Team at the Sullivan Hardware Do-It Center in Indianapolis. We both worked at Sullivan’s all four years of high school and during any vacation time home from college. Because of the tree lot, Christmas was the best time of year to work there.
Over the days leading up to Thanksgiving, all of us high school kids would set up the tree yard, lights, and displays outside. Inside the hardware, we’d clear the middle of the store to make room for Sullivan’s famous G-gauge model train display; it took us days to put together the train, tracks, and town scenes.
Finally, the tree truck would arrive, delivering hundreds of freshly cut conifers from a Michigan farm. For a few weeks out of the year, the parking lot would be graced with the refreshing and pungent aroma of live pine, strong enough to overcome Keystone Avenue traffic exhaust and the salty stink of hot grease from the neighboring Kentucky Fried Chicken.
Even if it was dumping snow or pouring rain, I always looked forward to going to work and braving the elements in the name of Christmas.
Us “tree kids” would bundle up in layers of clothing – over-sized army parkas, rubber rain gear, goofy wool hats, work boots, leather chores gloves – and park ourselves at the entrance to the Christmas lot. Sometimes we’d be swarmed by hundreds of customers at once, sending us running here and there – holding trees so people could stand back and study them, sawing off trunks and nipping off tops, securing the chosen conifer to the car roof with orange bailing twine.
Other days – wet and chilly weeknights, usually – we’d stand among the trees inside our temporary forest and wait all evening for one customer. The feel of a mug of hot chocolate or cider warming our hands and the unlimited Christmas cookies customers gave us as tips made the slow nights sweet.
“It was always better to work outside because everyone was excited and hopeful,” my brother added on our way home – his family tree tied to the roof of the station wagon. “Inside the store, everything was about sales and returns and rainchecks – it was about things.”
The trees were simple – they were about spirit.
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