The Old Man and the Tree

As Christmas time approached and the search for a tree morphed from abstract concept to practical undertaking, we became aware of a curious fact.

We know, first hand or second hand, several funny stories about Christmas trees, most involving trees which temporarily moved from their original location to the home of someone else.

One or two of the stories even made the newspaper, with an intrepid reporter describing a faint trail of bits of tinsel and shards of broken ornaments between the tree's original location and its improvised home.

A German variant recounted by an old lady adds some local Christmas cheer.

My father would work in the forest for much of the winter, and he would bring a Christmas tree a few days before Christmas. One year, he did not come home before dark. An hour passed, then another. Mother went and fed the cows and the pigs, we had dinner ready, but dad did not show up.
As the clock in the kitchen inched towards 9 pm, we began to get worried. It was not uncommon for people to get hurt while logging, and mom's voice betrayed increasing worry.

Towards 9:30 or so, we heard the front door open, heard a muffled curse, then the kitchen door flew open, a Christmas tree appeared, followed by dad. He was not hurt.

Over dinner, he recounted how he had cut the tree on a neighbor's property and then walked home along the main road. At the time, few people here had cars, and whenever he heard a vehicle he'd drop the tree and just walk on. Once the vehicle had passed, he'd turn around, pick up the tree and continue.

There was so much traffic, he smiled, I kept dumping the tree, then I had to backtrack, pick it up, walk a couple hundred yards, dump it, pick it up again. He ended his tale with a sigh: Of course, if anybody had asked, I could have told them the tree is from our property. Nobody would have crawled around the forest in the dark to check where one measly tree came from.

Starting the following year, we'd buy our Christmas tree at the town hall auction like everybody else. Trees were cheap back then, the town didn't make a profit on Christmas trees back then.