The Official Start of the Christmas Season

When Emma and Sarah were little, the start of the Christmas season was not the first Sunday in Advent, it was Columbus Day. That was the day we would head to a local tree farm to select and tag our Christmas tree. The expedition would enthusiastically be led by Gram who, I’m pretty sure, is a direct descendant of a Christmas elf. Uncle John and Aunt Joyce and Emma and Sarah’s cousins, Katie and Eric, would join us.


The owner of the tree farm was an amazing guy – a veritable Christmas tree genie. We would never call ahead, but somehow he would always be there waiting for us. He would remember not only what kind of tree we had picked the year before, but also where it came from on the farm. And he would already have several tree candidates in mind for each of our families. This wasn’t a business for him, it was a calling.


We always, and I mean always, seemed to get a beautiful day for our tree expedition. The property was gorgeous, so we enjoyed hiking over hill and dale exploring the hundreds of potential trees. Along the way, the kids would stop to catch crickets, which always seemed to be in abundant supply. I still remember the time we saw a bald eagle circling overhead, the first time I had ever seen one in the wild. Emma was a little naturalist, so she loved everything about this Christmas tree farm. We all did. It was a little piece of paradise.


We took our search for the perfect tree very seriously. We’d each find trees that we thought had potential and then call the others over for approval. The full tree committee would give a thorough and highly critical appraisal of each candidate. The tree farm owner would let this go on for as long as we all seemed to be enjoying it, but as soon as patience seemed to be running short he would jump in. “You know I had a tree in mind for you. It’s right over, here,” he would say. And then he’d lead our little parade over to a tree that was astonishingly perfect. Just to be safe, we’d measure it and walk all the way around it, checking it out from every angle. But he was always right – the perfect tree – and we’d probably walked past it ten times.


Once the trees were tagged we would head back to Gram’s for some pizza and then Gram did what she did best – bake cookies. She would already have mixed up the gingerbread dough, which needed to be chilled overnight. She would roll out the dough and the kids would help her cut out the gingerbread men and women, put them on the cookie sheets and then decorate them with way too many currants, cinnamon candies and sugar. The best part was eating the cookies right after they came out of the oven, accompanied by a glass of milk -the perfect end to a perfect day.


Some people have to wait until Christmas day and the arrival of Santa to experience the magic of Christmas, but for us, the magic of Christmas began in October with an elf named Gram and the Christmas Tree Genie.