From my youngest days I have enjoyed bringing in the Christmas tree as part of our Christmas celebrations. Our Christmas trees on the farm were always cedar trees cut from somewhere on our land. Back in the 1940s, our place had lots of cedar trees. Because Christmas trees dry out quickly, especially if you don't have a way to stand them in water, we never used to put up our tree early. We always just set it up just a few days before Christmas Day, and left it up until we thought it was getting too dry to keep.
I don't recall our ever having a store-bought Christmas tree, through all the days of my growing up, and even into the time when Nancy and I were married and had our own family. Our Christmas tree was always a "real" tree from our own farm. That later changed, because we often lived quite a ways from home. But even one year when we lived in southern Iowa, we made a trip back home at Thanksgiving time and decided to cut our Christmas tree and take it back to Iowa with us. It was a nice tree, but I wouldn't do that again. Our fine little Arkansas Christmas tree was bone dry by Christmas time, and we worried about the fire hazard.
My Dad involved us kids in bringing in our Christmas tree at an early age. Back when we were still farming with horses, I recall his getting Ben and me bundled up and in our old wooden-wheeled wagon, with the horses harnessed and hitched to the wagon, and we were on our way to bring in the Christmas tree. I think he had already looked over the place and probably had in mind a few pretty good possibilities, but he let us boys have a pick as to which cedar tree would be our Christmas tree this year.
We were pretty particular -- we wanted our tree to be tall, but not too tall; pretty full, but not too round; and bright green, not brownish green. We couldn't find any trees that were just perfect. This one had been growing next to other trees and it wasn't full on one side. That one had empty spots where the branches didn't fill the open spaces. That other one was a little brownish. We ended up picking the one that was a little sparse on one side, thinking that we could put that side to the wall and it would be fine. Dad had brought the chopping ax in the wagon, and it took just a couple of chops to fell our tree. We put it up on the wagon with us and off we went to the house. As we went, Dad let me drive the horses. So I was thinking I'm a big boy now, driving the team and bringing in the Christmas tree! Of course ever since I had been able to talk I had been watching Dad drive the horses, and I knew Giddup and Whoa and Haw and Gee and Easy There and how to handle the reins. I did notice that Dad stayed close to take back the reins in case I got in trouble with my driving.
Thinking back, I think my Dad was pretty good about letting me learn the fun part of skills that would later be involved in real work. Later on, come summer, my handling of the horses would be applied to driving the team and wagon in the hay field, and soon my driving job would be combined with tromping (packing) the hay and shaping the load on the wagon. Part of me might grouse when hay leaves were down my shirt and stickers were in my socks and the sweat bees were stinging and the sun was hot, hot; but I still had a feeling of being a big boy now, able to do jobs that I couldn't do when I was little; and there was a satisfaction in learning to do really useful things.
Of course, bringing in the Christmas tree didn't end with delivering it to the house. Dad made a stand for the tree, using two crossed lengths of 1"-by-4" boards. Then, we had to see how tall our tree looked in the house, and to cut it for height. It also needed to be sawed off square at the bottom so the stand would go on square. Dad nailed the stand to the bottom of the tree with a big sixteen penny nail. Then, because the nail wasn't quite enough to keep the tree straight, we used some anchor wires from the window frame to stabilize it. Then it was time to decorate.
Our Christmas tree decorations back in the early 1940s were very different from those we commonly see today. During those years of World War II, money was scarce, and if there were going to be Christmas presents, there wasn't money to buy decorations. So we made our own decorations. We would cut strips of colored paper, glue them together to form a loop, and make colored chains to drape around the tree. Sometimes we cut strips from the Sunday comics, which were printed in color even in those days of black and white. We also used strings of popcorn. Even Christmas cards became decorations on our tree. Our make-do Christmas decorations worked fine, and we had a Merry Christmas, even back when the world situation was pretty dark.
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Editor's note: Jerry Nichols, a native of Pea Ridge, is an award-winning columnist, a retired Methodist minister with a passion for history. He is vice president of the Pea Ridge Historical Society. He can be contacted by e-mail at [email protected], or call 621-1621.
Editorial on 12/16/2015