Christmas tree adventures

Each year around Christmas time, there are a few reports of decorated trees catching fire in people’s homes. Most common causes are bad wiring, tree too close to a wood stove or fireplace, tree too dry, or tipping it over.

Can’t help but shudder when thinking about the first Christmas tree I remember. Must have been about 1933. My family was living in an abandoned homesteader shanty made entirely of boards that let the drafts blow through and was akin to kindling.

All our water was laboriously hauled in buckets from a neighboring well, 150 yards across the road. There was no such thing as electricity, indoor plumbing or fire departments at Camas Prairie. Neighbors were few and far between.

That was the setting for my parents putting up a newly cut fir tree in the small living room to adorn with handmade colored paper decorations and a few precious glass ornaments. There were, however, little metal things, a bit like clothes pins, which were clipped to the end of branches to hold candles.

On Christmas Eve, my folks lit candles inserted in each of the clips. The candles were about twice the size of those used on birthday cakes. My dad did stand by with a bucket of precious water ... just in case. It was a wondrous sight in the eyes of a small boy like me. Baby brother Ritchey was too young to get very excited.

That ritual was a standard practice in those long ago days, and there must have been some fires, but I don’t recall any. The candles could only be used on trees with at least a 45-degree taper so the lower flames were out from the branches immediately above. Sounds foolhardy now, but it wasn’t then.

Alas, for the first time in my 84 Christmases, our tree this year is not from the forest. Comes from a factory, and I burn evergreen incense for aromatic aura. It wasn’t an easy choice, and when Iris first suggested the idea, I was quite upset until she reminded me of practically freezing my arthritic hands finding the perfect one the last few years at the lots, and the difficulty of getting them sawed off straight and set up in those stands with uncooperative screw bolts.

Before agreeing to such a traumatic change in tradition, I settled into my easy chair and thought back on past trips out to the woods. Recalled getting stuck a few times, cutting my foot with an ax, and one slide into a ditch. But the issue was decided when I remembered a column about the disastrous expedition in which I figured the tree had cost us over $80.

Iris picked out a beautiful seven-foot plastic tree strung with permanent lights and told me she figured it would pay for itself in three years. Showed me her figuring on paper, and I decided she may have been off one year but it didn’t matter.

I wondered at the time, why did she ask for grandson Parker Duncan to drive down from Whitefish and put it together when it only took him 15 minutes to unpack and set up? Later explained she wanted to avoid “traditional howling and cursing” that had become an integral part of our Yuletide tree rituals.

I like the tree very much, and in all honesty ... I did not miss the howling and cursing either. Hope all you readers had a very merry Christmas.

G. George Ostrom is a national award-winning Hungry Horse News columnist. He lives in Kalispell.