The Legend of the Christmas Tree

I don’t really know anything about any Christmas Tree legends; I just thought that it would be a "catchy" phrase to introduce this blog. I think that I read somewhere once upon a time that decorating evergreen trees was a heathen practice of some kind but I don’t actually know anyone I consider a heathen and almost everyone I know puts up a Christmas tree and I pretty much just associate with Christian folks so I won’t label the practice a heathen tradition, but I don’t see any real connection with prettified cedar trees and the birth of Jesus but it does make a convenient place to put Christmas presents under so I don’t object to them. The first Christmas tree that I remember was at the old Forester School. Our family lived at Forester back the 1940's and my brother Wayne started to school there in 1948. The Forester community held a Christmas program at the school each year back then and Santa always showed up and gave out presents to all the kids that came to the program. I was too little to go to school back then but somehow Santa knew that I was present and called my name and I got a toy just like all the other kids did. We all got bags of Christmas candy too. I don’t remember that we had a tree at our house back then but we may have. We moved to Heavener in1950 and we always had a Christmas tree each Christmas season there. We never had any tradition about us all going into the woods and cutting down a tree and hauling it home. My Dad always took care of that chore. My Dad, George Kelley, was an avid quail hunter and each year on one of his many quail hunts a few days before Christmas, he would find a suitable tree and cut it and bring it home. We never had anything but a small cedar tree and certainly never had a plastic tree. We would put the tree that Dad brought home up in the living room and hang "icicles" and strings of shiny rope around it and then patiently wait until December 25 to see if any presents showed up under it. Some always did. Usually new shirts that Mother had sewed for us and maybe a small toy or two for each of us. My Grandfather, Pa Kelley we called him, would come by on Christmas day and give us firecrackers to shoot off. That was OK but I never quite got the connection between firecrackers and Christmas. I don’t remember that we had Christmas lights on our tree but we might have as I got older. I do remember going over to Homer and Bobby’s house and they had some lights on their tree that had liquid in them that bubbled up. I thought that was pretty keen. Some folks in Heavener back then would decorate their houses and outside trees and such back then too, but it wasn’t as wide spread as the practice is today. Sometimes Dad would drive us up on the hill where Diana Guinn lived and from there we could look out across all of Heavener and see the pretty scenery around town. Somebody that lived up on that hill put up some really fine lights too. After I got growed up and got married and had a family of my own, it never occurred to me do the Christmas tree thing any different than my Dad had done, so down through the years I would find a cedar tree growing somewhere out in the wild and bring it home to be our Christmas tree. We moved around quite a bit and sometimes cedar trees were kinda scarce, but I always managed to find a "free" one somewhere. However; due to the poor quality I brought home on a "few" "rare" occasions I was frequently accused of bringing home a "Charley Brown" tree and am remembered more for those times than I am for the good ones I managed to find and bring home . For nearly forty years I did what I thought was my manly duty. I went into the woods and found a "nice" cedar tree, cut it down and proudly brought the tree home for my family to enjoy but then a few years back we made the switch to one of the "store bought plastic ones", and have used it since then. Peggy and our daughter have made some beautiful had crafted decorations to put on it and I must admit the tree is always much more attractive than any I ever brought in and they are certainly much less messy and safer than mine ever were; but somehow it just isn’t the same. I think that I thought there was a law or something that said Christmas trees had to be real evergreens and even then not evergreens that you bought from somebody but one that you went out and cut down yourself. Peggy tells me frequently that I live too much in the past and I reckon she is right again, and anyhow it is not the tree that makes a good Christmas is it? "For unto us is born this day in the City of David, a Savior who is Christ the Lord".
Merry Christmas Everyone!
....colin