Paul Bunyan prepares for the sacrifice of the vestal tree.
The deed is done.
Catherine, affectionately known as "The Mule", lugs the tree towards the house.
A short break for the beast of burden.
The tree newly installed on the deck. Tomorrow, lights!
Hope that title got your attention. Despite the titillating and overblown title, all this post is about is Christmas trees. Christmas trees are apparently a German tradition brought to us by those savage barbarians who used to slink around the Black Forest just looking for a Roman legionnaire to slaughter. One thing led to another and presto, evergreen trees, real and fake, are now in every American home during our much beloved holiday of outrageous materialistic excess, Christmas. Originally the "Christmas tree" was a prop used by the pagans to mark the Winter solstice. The Winter solstice is that day in the year when for one brief moment you seem to think that Winter is O.K., what with the holidays and beautiful snowy landscapes and all. Shortly after the solstice of course everyone sinks into a deep "when will Winter end" depression that generally lasts through June up here in Vermont. Beyond that, I don't really know if the Winter Solstice evergreen has any fertility connotations as I imply in my title. That was just a cheap marketing ploy in the spirit of the season. In any case, up here in the North Country we take our Christmas trees pretty seriously. That might be because we have quite a few evergreens growing around the region and Christmas presents a good opportunity to thin our overgrown forest. Catherine and I take the Christmas tree tradition so seriously that we have two trees, an outdoor tree and an indoor tree. Today we went and cut our outdoor tree which we will display proudly on our deck until shortly after the first of the year. At that point the outdoor and the indoor trees will be unceremoniously dumped in the woods somewhere. That usually happens around the same time that the holiday champagne runs out and the "when will Winter end" blues set in.
2 comments:
We get our tree from the boy scouts. They tie it onto the van and everything!
Neil, we'll see your boyscouts and raise you three prepackaged, tabletop pre-decorated kids trees:)
No, I don't feel like scrooge at all.
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