The Great Christmas Tree Incident

Several years ago when the boys were small, we were living in rural North Carolina. I had 17 acres of bottom land bounded by woods and hills. Being Florida transplants, our first winter there was very exciting. We were actually looking forward to the snow. By the time winter had set in, I had totally immersed myself in the ways of the woods (read all the Foxfire books) and could easily identify all the trees in the forest and their traditional uses. Now that I was a mountain man, I decided that we were going to have an old fashioned Christmas and we were going to go off into the woods and cut our own Christmas tree, just like the settlers did. (This by the way pre-dated National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, so I strongly suspect their tree-cutting scene may have been taken from our experience.)

Anyway, me and the boys headed out in to the wilderness in search of the perfect tree. I'm sure the boys were in awe of me because no body else's dad was stupid enough to do this. Look as we might, we could not find a suitable spruce or fir (found out later that they were only at higher elevations - must have missed that in the book). Undaunted, I couldn't help but notice that while there were no spruce or firs, there were plenty of cedar trees. Some of them were even shaped like Christmas trees. So after gaining the consensus of the 6 and 10 year old, I cut down a beautiful little cedar tree and we proudly dragged our trophy back to the homestead.

My very tolerant wife had the tree stand already prepared so we just shook the snow off the tree and immediately placed it in the appointed spot - a prominent place in the living room. Job well done, the menfolk retired to the dining room for hearty country breakfast that my wife had prepared while we were out. Several things happened during the hour or so that we ate breakfast. Us men (me and the 6 and 10 year old) discussed our manly deeds and various tales of the wilderness. My wife went about doing wifely things - dishes and cleaning and other adult responsibilities involved with running the household. And the newly cut cedar tree warmed up from twenty-something degrees to a toasty eighty-something degrees.

Something I had never really thought about up to this point was, well, you know how when you're walking through the woods in the summertime you see bugs everywhere, but you don't see any in the winter time. Did you ever wonder where they all go? We found that they evidently all hide under the bark of little cedar trees. We hear this blood curdling scream from the living room. Us manly men were now afraid - not because of what might be happening in the living room, but because from the tone of the screams, our very lives could be in danger. We ran into the living room and there were bugs of every size and description "disembarking" so to speak, from our little cedar tree. Invigorated from their brief winter nap, they were now excitedly running in all directions, some two-by-two, all over the living room. My wife began shouting orders - you, get that &^%$^ tree out of the house - you, get the bug spray - you, the broom. There were scared bugs and manly men running in all directions.

Once all the commotion had subsided, my wife and I are looking at each other and both boys began to cry. They were convinced that Christmas as they knew it was now over. Cheryl suggested that we all put our coats on and go into town and pick out a nice tree (and I was thinking yeah, like sissies), but the tears stopped, and we ended with a nice little tree and the rest of our Christmas that year was relatively uneventful. And that my friends is what became known in the Brown household as the great Christmas tree incident.

Merry Christmas
-RP