Frankenstein Tree or the Christmas That Almost Wasn’t

There was something awfully wrong at my parent’s home.  The house looked the same as always.  I mean, it looked the same as any given day in September, April or February.

Something was missing: Christmas.  No tree, no presents, no strings of lights, no holiday cards taped on the door.  Just like Gilligan’s Island: “No phone, no lights, no motorcars, not a single luxury.”

No Christmas.

“Hanging a Star” by D. Sharon Pruitt from Hill Air Force Base, Utah, USA via Wikimedia Commons

1983. I was a graduate student in Chicago.  I had skipped Thanksgiving at home that year (no money for travel).  For the Christmas break, my parents sent me a plane ticket home to Texas.

Bleary-eyed off my late flight, Dad picked me up at the airport.  We never did talk much.  Well, he never did, except to tell stories about my Grandfathers or the grande olde days back in ancient times, when gasoline was a nickel a gallon and men wore hats.

We drove the 15 miles home along the dark highway in relative silence.  Nothing new about that.  I had gotten used to Dad’s silences.

The night was cold, but nothing like it had been in Chicago.  Chicago was routinely below zero.  At least December in Texas still registered in positive numbers, even if it was at the freezing point.

Too many late nights, too much coffee in graduate school had begun to take its toll on my health.  I was dog-tired and needed about 90 hours of sleep.  Ominous gray circles had formed under my eyes giving me that oh-so attractive Gulag labor camp look.  I needed my Mom to make me a cup of cocoa.  I needed to curl up in a familiar comfy bed and hibernate for a few weeks.

We pulled into the driveway and slid into the garage.  As I hauled my suitcase up the back stair to our little ranch-style bungalow, a two bedroom house where my parents raised four kids, Mom met me at the door with a big hug.  Home at last.

“Mom.  Dad. What happened to Christmas?  Where’s the tree?”

“Well, it seemed like too much this year.  Everyone’s busy.”

“What do you mean, everyone’s busy?  No one is coming over?”

“Nope.  They all have plans.”

“Whad’ya mean ‘plans’? Their plan better be to get their butts over here.”

“Well, now son, we don’t want to cause a fuss.”

“No presents?”

“Well with all you kids grown, I just thought we’d give you all some cash.  Seemed easier.”

Not that we ever made a big deal about Christ.  Our family was not religious.  We weren’t church goers.  We thought of Jesus as a very nice man and we grew up with the Golden Rule and all that “do unto others” stuff, but—no offense intended—Jesus didn’t come to the house. We did not have a lot of formal traditions or sacred rituals, but the few truly family events —birthdays, Christmas day—they meant something.  Didn’t they?

In our family, Christmas wasn’t about religion.  It was about family and capitalism.  The true American spirit of E Pluribus Unum.  It was about showing thanks and expressing fondness by exchanging presents.  Hours spent with the Sears Roebuck “Wish Book.” It was about dreams coming true.  Wish fulfillment of the highest order.

As I lay in my room awake that night, I knew I had to act.  I mean, I had not come all this way to be depressed.  I could be depressed away at school without any help from the family.

Christmas was about family and we were going to act like a family if I had to hog-tie them into chairs.

The next morning was December 24.  Time for action.  Time for Christmas, no matter what.  Called my older sister and just said.  You’re coming over to mom and Dad’s tonight for dinner. Buy food for ten people.  See you at 7 o’clock.  Dazed, she said yes.

I kicked my youngest brother out of bed.  “Get up.  We got work to do.”

“Wha, wha what?” he said.  But he did get up, pulled on a pair of jeans and his boots and that was that.  He wasn’t the kind of person to ask too many questions.  He could tell when something different was about to happen.

Took the keys to Dad’s truck.  Asked Mom for a charge card.  Time to get busy.

First we drove to the mall.  Fighting our way through hordes of last-minute shoppers like ourselves, we had to elbow our way past huge ladies in spandex, each trailing five little kids and one in a stroller, to get to the checkout counters.  It was a Xmas eve madhouse and these were the inmates all alive with the energy of bargains, bargains, bargains!

We went from store to store at first then split up, dash around and find just one nice present for everyone.  We bought practical presents—nothing too fancy: a sweater or two, a toolbox, warm gloves.  In Dad’s typical half-way finished fashion, he had previously obtained a new stereo, turntable, receiver and all , but did not have working speakers.  We got him a small pair of speakers that were compatible.  At least it would sound like Christmas.

Shopping done, it was time for a tree.  You can’t have Christmas without the tree.  We envisioned rescuing some small frail natural tree, an image lifted directly from “A Charlie Brown Christmas.”  We went to the nearest Christmas tree lot, but all they had were leftover wreaths.  No more trees.  Drove a few miles.  The second lot was the same story.  “No trees, sorry pal.  You shoulda come by yesterday.”

Drove a few more miles, we started to get nervous.  What will we do if we can’t find a tree?  Will it still be Christmas? Be cool.  Be cool.  We’ll find a tree.

Third stop.  As Grandpa, may he rest in peace, would have said, “Third time’s the charm.” Honestly never knew what he meant until that moment.  Old geezer at the tree stand said, “Well, we got one left in the tent.  We was just packing it in, but you’re glad to have a look see.”

Inside the tent, it was all wrong.  The lone tree was about six feet tall, and the right shape, but it was all wrong.  It was flocked in pink, as if the Cat in the Hat came back and forgot to use the “Voom” to clean up the pink snow.  This wasn’t going to work at all.  We always had a natural green tree.  Not aluminum, not flocked and certainly not pink.

But it was the last tree and we were running out of time.  We shook the tree and some of the flocking fell off.  Shook it again.  Wide-eyed, we had the same thought.  We could remove the flocking, but how?

As we drove back towards home with the tree, we debated the best remedy.  Sweeping the tree?  Not enough flock removed.  Raking the tree?  Too much damage.  Paint it green?  Clever, but not practical given the temperature outside.  And then we passed the outdoor car wash.  Perfect.  We’ll wash the tree.

The tires squealed as I made the turn into the lot.  Of course, we were the only people washing a vehicle.  It was a pretty sight, all hung with unintentional icicles that glittered and shimmered just like sliver-foil tinsel in the late afternoon sun.  We took the tree from the bed of the truck and placed in the center of the car-wash bay.  Dropped a few quarters in the machine and the high pressure hose sprung to pneumatic life.  Aimed it at the tree and —blamm!  Away it blew.

Too close.  Too much pressure.  Time to reposition the tree, step back to a greater distance from the spray nozzle and try again.  It worked!  Flocking began to peel away, revealing the green tree beneath.  But as we progressed, the top of the tree began to droop a bit, like it was melting in the sun.  Not good.

The top of the tree was soaked and began to freeze up.  We had to hurry or soon we’d have a gigantic green and pink Popsicle on our hands.  So hit it again!

Then in a flash of icy spray, icicles and pine needles, the tree exploded in half, the two sections parting like the Titanic and heading in opposite directions. The top half was headed for Abilene, the bottom half for Arkansas.  I ran one way, brother the other.

We hadn’t figured on traction being an issue.  After spraying water on the cold pavement of the car-washing stall, we had effectively created a small ice rink.  As anyone who routine wears western boots will testify, they aren’t good on ice.  Two steps were all it took for both of us to end up head over tea-kettle.  That’s a hard fall.  We did manage to snag the tree halves before they left the county.

Sore, wet and angry, we examined our truncated tree.  It wasn’t a tree at all.  It was two trees: the top of one, nailed and wired to the bottom of another, then camouflaged by the flocking. In our zeal to get our natural tree, we had bought a Frankenstein tree, put together from discarded trees.  Dumbfounded but undaunted, I said, “We can fix this.  We have to fix this.”

Ever the problem solving, do-it-yourselfers, we knew that back at the garage, we had a thousand tools, lumber and 90 choices of wire.  As kids, we’d help Dad build a television from hundreds of individual transistors, capacitors and piece-parts with Heathkit plans.  We had shingled the roof of our home entirely with nuclear family labor alone—four kids, Mom and Dad on the roof wailing away with hammers and nails for days on end. We held the light for endless hours as Dad worked on the car.  We were fixers.  Just about anything broken could be fixed.

But we still had to start with clean tree parts.  So, I held my half up as my brother blasted the flocking with the spray nozzle.  In another five minutes, I was soaked head to toe and covered in flocking. And then we switched, until two otherwise perfectly reasonable and sane adults stood frozen solid with outstretched arms, covered in pink flocking.  Look Mommie, it’s the ambiguously gay cowboys of Christmas!

Cracking the ice sheets of our frozen armor, we tossed our tree halves in the pick up and headed back to the garage.  Before we could operate on the tree to restore its height, we had to melt the ice and dry it.  Roping each half, we tossed the spare ends over the rafters and hoisted the pieces up.  It only took a few minutes to heat the garage’s car bay with the propane burner, its jet engine sound echoing in the peace of Christmas Eve.  Ice melting, the garage began to smell green and piney.

Selecting a small 1-by-2, we gave our Charlie Brown tree a new spine and wired the halves along it.  With a few lights and ornaments, no one would know what this little tree had been through on its journey from the tree farm.

Brothers and sister arrived.  Welcome hugs lasted a minute or two longer than before.  We trimmed the tree together that evening, taking care to place the ornaments individually and to talk about our favorites.  After dinner, we savored opening presents one at a time, taking a moment to admire each one as a group and give thanks.  Making a mad dash to the presents as we had as children and ripping them open in frenzy didn’t seem right.  After all, there was exactly one present per person.

As the last slice of pecan pie was served, my brother-in-law, a burly mountain of a man, got choked up and shed a tear as he toasted our family, the tree and the Christmas that almost wasn’t.

From that night forward, Christmas changed.  We slowed things down, took time to enjoy each other.  Christmas was about family again.

Over the years, our family celebration has grown and now includes husbands and wives, children and grandchildren, uncles, aunts and cousins and the occasional holiday waif.  As Andy Williams sang, “It’s the most wonderful time of the year.”

About Hornsby

I'm a mid-career public relations executive now, but I've had nine lives. After 15 years climbing the ladder in the art world up to executive director in a museum, I vaulted over to this Internet thing, which was just getting going good in the 1990's. I worked at an information technology company, then had a short stint as a marketing executive, which led to technology public relations full time. After the tech bubble burst, I did corporate PR for a while, until I joined the academic world. I'm now a public relations executive for an Ivy League university. During the same career trajectory, I transitioned from a visual artist (BFA, MFA) to being a writer and performer (storytelling, stand-up). My newest venture/hobby is music, rekindled as a baritone in an a cappella choir.

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