Christmas Tree Grandmas

 

Cedar Tree Grandma

Just a few days before Christmas, they went out to the woods and cut down their tree.  I was never with them, but know from Grandma’s stories that they took a crosscut saw with them, and looked for a cedar just a little taller than grandpa.  They dragged it back to the house, making sure they didn’t take any small animals or birds into the house along with the shaggy little cedar.  They set the tree into a big old store tin she had covered with freezer paper, red crepe paper streamers, and yellow construction paper circles, making it look like a drum.  Just one string of colored bulbs and a few light, fragile ornaments on the tree, as anything too heavy would fall to its doom onto their thin living room carpet.  We spent Christmas Eve with them and Aunt Joyce, who had come home to Indiana from St. Louis, Missouri; she told us of building airplanes for McDonnell-Douglas and eating exotic foods like tacos and Chinese chow mein.   Christmas Eve was the only time supper was served buffet-style at grandma’s; her counters were filled with ham, cornbread dressing, and bowls full of vegetables they had grown and canned – spiced beets and green beans and lime pickles all shining like jewels in cut-glass dishes.  Thick slices of the very best bread.  Fruitcake, Christmas pie, divinity and fudge.  

 I’m sure there were gifts for us all under the tree, but what I remember most are the stockings – real socks that grandpa had tacked onto the door between their bedroom and living room, as they had no fireplace.  Our stockings were filled the same way year after year: an orange, an apple, a handful of peanuts in the shell, foil-wrapped chocolates and a candy cane.  Joyce and mom would take turns playing the piano and we’d sing "Silent Night" and other carols until it was time to head home, dad warning us that we needed to be in our beds and fast asleep before Santa arrived.  Boots and mittens and wool coats were retrieved from the back room and quickly put on, as hugs and handshakes and "Merry Christmases" were shared on our way out the door.   

 

Aluminum Tree Grandma

The day before Christmas, they put the new silver tree together.  The two sections of the tall silver-painted trunk/pole were screwed together, then secured into the stand with 3 giant I-bolts; grandpa used the level to make sure it was straight.  Then each of the fluffy silver branches was slid out of their protective brown paper sleeves, the colored dot on the end of each branch checked and then inserted into the corresponding hole in the silver pole.  Layers and layers and layers of silver branches, ending with what was in itself a little silver tree, jammed into the hole drilled into the top of the pole.  Then grandma hung the new ornaments – all pink.  Some glass, some Styrofoam, covered with pink ribbon.  No lights, no star, but the magical color wheel was plugged in nearby, bathing the tree in red, then green, then yellow, then blue.  The new electric tree stand tinkled “Silent Night” as it turned the shiny tree round and round.   

At Christmas lunch, there was  fried chicken and fried biscuits with apple butter from my uncle’s restaurant, marinated shrimp and ribbon Jello salad, ice cream snowballs and sugar cookies decorated with all the colors of icing.   So many cousins, so many presents, so much crumpled paper and ribbon and boxes.  I complained because we always left the raucous, joyous gathering first - too early - but there were cows to milk and calves to feed back home.

 

Now I am the grandma.  I am a Frasier Fir grandma, but I have a silver tree and a box full of pink ornaments in the basement.  There’s a cedar tree in our backyard, and I cut branches and tie them to the staircase and drape them onto the tops of our cabinets.   When everyone comes for Christmas lunch, there is ham and spiced beets and ribbon Jello salad and sometimes shrimp cocktail.  Cookies and some sort of spectacular dessert.  Stockings and crumpled paper.  There are games, boxed wine and so much talk and laughter.  I don’t want them to leave, but will confess that it is a little relief when the house transforms from a rowdy mess back to a quiet mess.

My grandmas did it all without Pinterest.  Without WalMart or Target. Without Amazon prime delivery.  Without a microwave oven or Zip-Lock bags. Without cell phone texting to confirm sweater sizes or decide who is bringing what to dinner.

But I’m sure their Christmases weren't without worry – worry about sweater sizes and who is bringing what to dinner.  Worry about the world - they were the grandmas of the 1960's and 70's, living in a world of war, of counterculture, of mini skirts and rock and roll - a world that was changing faster than they ever could have imagined.  And their families changed - marriages, babies, traumas, sicknesses and death.   

I'm a grandma of the 2020's.  The world is changing fast and I worry about the kids who gather around our table - what does the future hold for them?  They will have such great joys - marriages, babies, accomplishments -  and I hope we have prepared them to endure the traumas which will surely come.  I try to stay positive and not worry - I can still hear grandma (cedar tree) telling me that there are 27 scriptural passages in the Bible which tell us not to worry.  

But I still do.  

And despite the worry, the world spins and Christmas comes.

It will come in a few weeks, and it will come again in 2025, whatever 2025 brings.

It will come with stockings and cookies and joy.  

With the cedar and the aluminum.

Peace.