Tannenbaum Trauma By Kate Gostick
Long before the dawn of Christianity, people have brightened up the Winter months by hanging evergreen branches above their doors to ward off witches and evil spirits during the long, dark nights.
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or the Druids the boughs symbolised everlasting life, and the Vikings believed evergreens were the plant of the sun god, Balder. In ancient Rome, Saturnalia, a midDecember feast in honour of the God of Agriculture, Saturn, was marked by evergreens in homes and temples to symbolise the anticipated fruitfulness and greenery of the fields, orchards and olive groves. In Germany, in the 16th century, Christians brought decorated trees into their homes around Christmas time. From as early as 1747, German settlers in Pennsylvania erected Christmas trees first in their community spaces and then in their individual homes, but the trees were rejected by the wider population who saw them as “pagan mockery”. Queen Victoria’s German husband, Prince Albert, brought the idea of a decorated tree to England. In 1846, when the couple was portrayed in a sketch standing next to a Christmas with their children, decorated trees became the must-have item in any fashionable Victorian home. Christmas trees have always brought with them conflict in our house. Neither my husband nor I had grown up with a real tree. We had a plastic tree whose branches needed to be inserted into the two-piece brown 50
plastic trunk sat in a three-pronged stand. Each year, from the year I was born, when my grandparents had brought the tree for me, a plastic twig would become detached, and we would search for the stub in order to reattached it. My dad would then disappear into the shed to fix the lights and return moments later with a twinkling string to bring the plastic tree to life. Dominic’s dad also had broken lights to repair every year, but he was not so technically proficient with electrical items as my dad, so Dominic recalls yearly stress and argument as their golden tinsel tree was erected and attempts made to illuminate it. When it was time for us to get our own tree, we had decided to go for the real tree option. Before moving to America, we would head off to Delemere Forest some time in the first two weeks of December. Dominic would pull out a tree from the pre-cut specimens leaning against the wooden fence and hold it up for my approval. A shake of the head would signal to him that this was not “the one” and he would then pull out a succession of trees before I came to the conclusion that the first tree he had pulled out was actually the perfect tree. We would then head off into a hut to meet a man from the Rotary Club wearing a white nylon beard and a red suit. It was here that my children discovered that Santa’s real name was Dave, as a well-meaning elf popped her head around the door of the hut to ask Father Christmas a very important question. “Do you want a brew Dave?” she yelled. “Lovely Sheila. I’m parched,” replied Santa adjusting
LANCASHIRE & NORTH WEST MAGAZINE
his nylon beard and asking James, who was sitting on his knee, what he wanted Father Christmas to bring him this year. When we moved to America, Santa was only to be found in the Shopping Malls, and tree buying became an experience of its own. Families in America usually purchased their trees the last weekend of November when the passing of Thanksgiving heralded the start of the “Holiday Season” and Fall decorations were exchanged for Christmas ones. Dominic loved to go to Trombetta’s ice cream and garden centre, where you would select a precut tree and then sit and eat ice cream whilst the tree was strapped securely to the top of the car by Mr Trombetta. As soon as you had lapped up the scraps of black raspberry, chocolate or coffee from the bottom of the enormous paper tub with the festive red plastic spoon and maybe bought a poinsettia or two, it was all ready for you to drive off hassle-free. I, on the other hand, preferred the long drive to a tree farm in Grafton, where you were given a large tarp and a saw and pointed in the direction of the field full of trees in the distance. You would then march off through the snow to choose the perfect tree. After much discussion, the tree was selected. Dominic would lie on the frosty, wet ground to saw away at the trunk, snow falling in clumps on his back from the long branches of the fattest tree in the field until it fell. He would lift it onto the tarp and drag it back to the car through the snow, which would rise up over the top of his boots and melt against his skin before dripping down into his socks. He would then attempt to lift the wet spiky branches onto the www.lancmag.com
