The Everlasting Tree

Like a big declaration of holiday spirit, our Christmas tree sits prominently in the corner of our living room every year. Its natural forest green color contrasts beautifully with the hardwood floors and red upholstered furniture, and the mostly homemade ornaments that plentifully adorn its boughs give it a childish but comfortable feeling. Tiny multi-colored lights are strung, sparkling, across the branches, and a long rope of shiny red garland encircles the tree several times. The finishing touch is a glamorous Christmas star for the top of the tree, placed atop the peak by my father who was then, and still is now, the only member of the family tall enough to reach. Our tree is truly an annually glorious spectacle.

Sometimes the true meaning of Christmas is hard for a kid to understand. Through commercialism and marketing schemes, kids have been caught up in a world of technology and media, and it's easy to forget what Christmas is really about. When they lose sight of that meaning, they lose a lot of the holiday spirit that makes Christmas so special. It's almost ironic, in a way, that anyone can forget the meaning when it surrounds us on a daily basis, not just at Christmas time. Some kids just think the meaning of Christmas is presents, but boy, have they got it all wrong. The meaning of Christmas, quite obviously, is the tree.

As a kid, I knew very well that you couldn't have Christmas without a tree. Where would the presents go? Where would the decorations and lights go? What would we all gather around to drink eggnog and act festive? These clearly rhetorical questions only proved my point further. The tree was not about Christmas. Christmas was about the tree.

After seventeen Christmases, the trees all start to run together in the memory, but there is one particular histree that stands out in my mind. There was one year that our glorious spectacle of a tree was just a bit more spectacular than usual. My eighth Christmas, which took place when I was seven years old, holds the memory of my favorite tree like a cradle holds a baby. This was the year that Christmas took on a little bit more meaning. This was the year of the everlasting tree.

*****

It was early December. The end of the first week or the beginning of the second. In my mind, this meant only one thing. It was tree time! I was incredibly excited. I banged around the house like the little drummer boy on a sugar high, rum pum pummeling into walls and down the stairs. I'd ask my parents to take me tree shopping approximately two thousand eight hundred and eighty times a day, at thirty-second intervals.

"Can we get the tree now, Mommy? Please? Now? Nobody's busy, let's go now. Can we? Come on, it's almost Christmas! Let's go now, okay? Get the car keys, okay? Mommy? Are we going?"

"Not yet, Melanie, wait a few days, alright?" my mother said, exasperated and trying to calm me down. I was unfazed by her lack of holiday cheer.

"DADDY! Let's go get the tree now!"

My little sister and brother were almost as excited as I was, and helped encourage my parents to take us shopping.

"Yeahhhh!" my five-year-old sister Tiffany cheered along with me. "Let's go pick out our Christmas tree!"

"Twee! Twee!" chimed in Adrian, my brother of three years.

We were relentless. After a day or two of badgering, we were on our way to Christmas tree lots all over Sackville, hunting for this year's perfect tree. Finding the right tree is a common holiday struggle for any family at Christmastime, and we were not about to be the exception. The tree hunt was a long, drawn out process, that involved inspecting every tree from top to trunk. We had to take into consideration the height and width of the tree, how fat it looked, bushiness, how prickly the needles were, space underneath for fitting gifts, and a number of other things that seasoned tree shopping experts know to look for. It was tough job, but we were smart kids. We knew we could do it.

After much deliberation, our family finally settled on one big bushy tree. It was tall, and a deep healthy green color, like it was still in the forest. The needles weren't too prickly or too flimsy and there was plenty of room for presents to fit beneath it.

"I like this one!" Tiffany exclaimed, finalizing in all of our minds that this was indeed the perfect tree.

"Twee!" Adrian cried out gleefully.

The man working at the Christmas tree lot came over to help us out. I can't remember exactly what he looked like anymore, but I do recall that he had a shaggy moustache and wore blue overalls that smelled like cigarette smoke mixed with pine.

"This here's a good tree," he told us. We already knew that, of course, but we didn't mind hearing confirmation. "Strong and healthy! Only cut from out in the countree two days ago."

In all of our minds, the tree was ours, no question about it. But suddenly, little Tiffany spoke up with a question the rest of us hadn't thought to ask.

"What's its name?"

The man looked perplexed. It might sound a little odd to some people, giving their Christmas tree a name, but to us it seemed quite natural, although we had never done it before. It reminded me of an old Christmas record that my father used to play to get us all into the holiday spirit. On one side of the record, in place of a song there was a dialogue between Santa Claus and a Christmas tree.

"What is my poipose fo being heah?" the tree asks Santa Claus. "I was happy living in the fowest with the boids, but I was cut down and bwought heah, and now I'm dying. And fo what? Chwistmas is fo the gweedy!"

While the accent made the sad tree humorous, as a child I was quite intreegued by the message in the dialogue. Santa tells the tree that his purpose is to make the children happy, and to more or less embody the Christmas spirit. To our family, trees were more than just decorations. They were more like temporary pets. So of course, Tiffany's unexpected question seemed very logical to us.

"What's its name?" she asked again, forcing an answer out of the man.

"Uhhh, it's name?" the man stalled, scratching at his moustache. "It's name is, uhhh…"

The thoughts in his mind seemed to be flowing more slowly than a streem of sap. Suddenly it came to him.

"Travis!" He declared triumphantly. "His name is Travis Tree."

"Twavis!" Adrian shrieked.

We were satisfied. Travis was a good name for our tree. My parents told the man we'd be buying Travis, and the man tied a little tag around one of Travis' branches to say he was ours.

"Write Travis on the tag!" I told him. He chuckled, but wrote out a big TRAVIS anyway.

We paid the man for our tree, and he helped us strap Travis onto the roof of our van so we could bring him home.

"Mommy, what if he falls off the roof?" I asked, deeply concerned for Travis Tree's welfare.

"He's not going to fall off, don't worry," my mother assured me.

Sure enough, we made it all the way home without Travis falling off the roof. We untied him and brought him inside, where our dad set him up in his designated corner of the living room.

"Let's decorate Travis now!" yelled out Tiffany, while dancing about excitedly in front of the tree.

"After dinner," said our mother, firmly. There would be no arguing about this.

We all bit our lips to keep from begging to decorate it now, and impatiently waited for dinner. It seemed to be taking ages. My sister and I sat fidgeting in the kitchen, watching as our mother scuffled back and forth between the stove and the pantree, preparing a meal that was doomed to be unappreciated, due to everyone's preoccupation with Travis. When we were bored with watching her cook, we moved out into the living room to admire Travis.

"Travis is the best tree ever!" Tiffany told me, as if I didn't already know.

Perhaps it was just the excitement of the Christmas season, but I agreed, grinning and nodding at my sister and at Travis. Honestly, I couldn't tell you now exactly what it was that made us feel so attached to Travis, but it must have been something special. It was more than his good looks. He was an extraordinary tree.

Dinner finally came and went, rice and poultree of some sort, though I wasn't paying much attention. The time finally came to decorate Travis, and the experience was probably the most exciting event of that year's Christmas. We wrapped him first with strings of sparkly rainbow lights, and followed up with glittery red garland, painted across his boughs like stripes on a candy cane. My sister and I delicately hung our mother's homemade macaroni noodle angel ornaments and followed them with painted walnuts and shiny golden pretzels. We had more different kinds of ornaments than the tree had branches to hold them all. Our father hung the ornaments at the top of the tree, where we couldn't reach, and finished off with the glowing star on top. It was fitting. To us kids, Travis himself was the star.

The next few weeks are a blur of happiness and fun in my mind. It was a typical Christmas with good food, great presents, and a spectacular tree. Christmas Eve seemed to be the longest day of the year, with anticipation of the next morning causing the entire day to drag on slowly but enjoyably. Christmas morning itself all happened too quickly, but that was the norm. We spent the afternoon visiting relatives and being cheerful, and finished off with an enormous turkey dinner. The next week we spent outside in the snow, and New Year's came and went before we even thought to realize it. Travis stayed handsome-looking, and we were constantly dazzled by his presence throughout the whole season. Soon after New Year's however, the time came to do the most dreaded thing imaginable to Travis Tree. Us kids had hoped that if we didn't mention it, our parents might forget, but there was to be no such luck. The time came when we had to get rid of Travis.

"Why do we have to?" I inquired, upset. "Can't Travis stay? He's not bothering anyone by standing in the corner!"

"Because Christmas is over," explained my father. "The tree is going to start to lose his needles soon, and it's going to make a mess on the floor."

"You wouldn't throw me away if I made a mess on the floor!" I screeched angrily.

My dad looked amused. I didn't understand how he could be so uncaring at a time like this. Travis was the best Christmas tree we'd ever had, and look how we were treeting him in return. We were going to throw him out! It was absolutely unthinkable! I did what any normal, traumatized kid would do in that situation. I started to bawl.

"Don't throw Travis away!" I wailed inconsolably.

"Alright, alright," sigh my father, incredibly frustrated. "Look, we won't throw him away, but he can't stay in the house. We'll put Travis in the backyard, and he can lean there against the other trees. Is that okay?"

I nodded, wiping my nose on my sleeve. He wouldn't be in the house for me to see as often, but I could still visit him in the backyard. Besides, Travis might be happier being outside with his own kind.

Dad moved Travis outside and set him up so that he was leaning against two other trees. That's where he stayed, and I was satisfied. Realistically, I knew that Travis would probably turn brown and lose his needles within a couple of weeks, but I tried not to think about it. It was a paltree fact that I did not want to consider. Oddly enough, I didn't have to.

Travis did not turn brown and lose his needles during those few weeks. A few months later, he was still as green as ever. How Travis stayed so fresh looking was a complete mystree, but it was late April before he began to brown. It was amazing he'd lasted so long. By the middle of May, Travis was looking pretty sickly, and we understood that it was his time to go. The emotional attachment to Travis that we'd felt at Christmas time was still present, but we had come to terms with the fact that it was Travis Tree's time to go. I felt sad that he was dying, but it was a tragically acceptable moment.

I stood outside with my Dad as he plucked Travis up from between the other two trees to throw him out. As he moved Travis out of the way, I noticed something small and green poking out of the ground near the spot where Travis had stood. I dropped into the grass and crawled up to the green thing, unbelieving of what I saw.

"Daddy!" I gasped. "Travis had a baby!"

Sticking out of the grass like a proud declaration of a continued legacy was a tiny pine tree. My sadness was replaced by a giddy excitement. I ran for my sister and dragged her outside to show her. We danced around the backyard, giggling and shouting about the baby tree. All of a sudden, my sister asked the question that started it all.

"What's its name?" she asked me.

I thought about it for a moment. Christmas was long over with, but the spirit of Christmas and its true meaning was with us in full force. And maybe, just maybe, it meant a little bit more than I had previously thought. The meaning was not so much the tree, but the happiness that we derived from it. Travis made us happy when he was here, and left us an unexpected gift to keep us happy after he had gone. It might have been mid-May, but it felt just like Christmas.

"Well?" she poked me. "What's its name?"

I scrunched up my face in concentration, and then it came to me.

"Trevor!" I shouted, grinning widely.

Tiffany cheered, and we danced around in the backyard for the rest of the day, exhausting ourselves. As long as Trevor was there, the symbol of Christmas remained, and even now, a full decade later, Trevor still stands as a reminder of Christmas and it's happiness. He's a bit bigger than he was ten years ago, and he's started to look a lot like his father. Ever since that year, we've never had a tree that quite lived up to legacy that Travis left us, but we've been happy. Travis would be proud!