THE PINE NEEDLE STATE?

“...and they rested on the house with timber of cedar.” (I Kings 6:10)

Boy does cedar smell nice! My mother had a cedar chest. In the cedar chest she kept quilts and afghans and sweaters, and even some of our baby clothes. I have some small cedar blocks that I have placed in my own dresser, in the drawers where I store clothing. Many evergreen trees have a nice scent. Balsam fir has that classic New England Christmas tree smell!

There is one month in which I particularly think about PINE, pine needles and a pine tree smell. You’re probably thinking, “It’s DECEMBER, right?!” Actually, it’s not December - it’s January! In a number of postings I’ve mentioned that while I like some aspects of Christmas, there are some aspects of it that I don’t particularly like. When I was a kid, I LOVED the decorating! I was usually the person to climb up into the crawl space and bring down all the boxes marked “XMAS”. When I was in elementary school, we got real trees. Somewhere around 8th Grade, my Dad bought a fake tree. It was green - not one of those silver/aluminum ones, but it was kind of weird in that it was placed in a stand that rotated and played music. I loved all the decorating. It didn’t matter how long it took. It was a blast. I do remember that one year when we had a real tree, my brother Eddie knocked the tree over! After that incident, my very cautious and practical father always secured the real trees with twine tacked to the wall!

I remember my mother in her late 40s and early 50s complaining that Christmas was SO much work and responsibility and really didn’t seem worth the effort. I thought she was NUTS! Then I got into my own late 40s and early 50s, and, I kind of see her point. Don’t get me wrong. If you’ve followed the blog over the past month or so, you know this was actually the best Christmas I’ve had in over ten years! I’m often kind of melancholy at Christmas time. This year, I really enjoyed myself and was glad for the holiday. But even this year, there IS that one bummer which even those who fanatically LOVE Christmas happen to dislike...having to take everything down, including the tree.

If I were passing out the rewards at the judgment seat of Christ (and boy is THAT a crazy fantasy??!!) there’d be a special reward for those who work hard in putting away the Christmas things. It’s one thing to do all the decorating. The cleanup and putting everything away which happens just 3 or 4 or MAYBE 5 weeks later can be a real letdown. Loads of people want to DECORATE for Christmas on December 2. Not too many are on hand for the cleanup on January 2 or 7 or whenever you clean the stuff up. I’m grateful that my son Jon took all the ornaments and lights off the tree. Every first week of January, I pick up the tree that I purchased just a month or so earlier, and I carry it out to the street. (Honestly, I’m ready for a fake tree, but my young adult “kids” still want a real one!) Every year I go through something that most Jewish people don’t have to worry about: all that mess of pine needles EVERYWHERE. Last year and this year have been the WORST years for pine needles all over the place! Some years, I’m still finding and cleaning up pine needles around the floor and heating grates and baseboard as late as April. In extreme years, I’m still finding pine needles around the house in July. I can tell this is going to be a pine needles in July year!

Maybe some of you Christmas tree experts can tell me how to get the Christmas tree to DRINK. I know a “fresh cut” is the key thing. We used to get the tree, then I’d saw a few inches off the bottom when we got home. When Rachel got old enough, SHE’D saw it, and she did a better job than I did. THOSE trees DRANK. I’d be filling up the stand with water constantly. The past few years and especially the past two, the trees did not drink at all. Now, the Higgins Family Christmas Tree place in Ashland gives the tree a “fresh cut” when you buy it, but I wonder if the twenty minutes or so from the time they cut the bottom to the time I get it into the stand at home is too long. Does some sap coating form and seal the bottom? I had a whole stand full of water to dump tonight. I’d like to avoid all this next year. (I know, I know, buy the fake tree!)

About fourteen years ago when my kids were in elementary school we took them on vacation one summer to Maine. Rachel and Amy’s friend Erika came along with us. One day driving through York County, Maine, we were talking and playing games, and I asked the kids a multiple choice question. It was this: Maine is known as: a) the pine tree state b) the lobster state c) the junk car state

Immediately Erika piped up with “c) the junk car state”! I guess she’d seen enough ‘59 Chevy Bel-Airs and ‘64 Dodge Polaras up on blocks at the sides of the road to come to that conclusion! Of course I announced that the answer was “a) the pine tree state”!

Well, right now I’m in “the pine needle state” and it’s in my home in Framingham!