Remember when Christmas rolled around and you ran downstairs and your house was over-stuffed with a wonderland of Christmas cheer and gifts? And your tree was the finest fir you could pick out at the tree lot that set up shop in the parking lot of the Winn-Dixie? And your dad bitched about putting it on top of the car? And your mom always thought it wasn’t “full” enough? Ah…the memories. Of course, my family’s version was a tad different. In my family you didn’t just pick up a Christmas tree on the way home from church the Sunday after Thanksgiving…oh no. My parental units took obtaining a Christmas tree as a perfect opportunity for a little “Forced Farish Family Fun”.
The acquiring of the tree. What you must first know was that my parents put an addition on the back of our house which can only be described as a giant open 2 story living room, which we referred to as “the new den”. My parents, being smart, savvy folks, had tiled this giant room, making a virtual teenage proof room that could in fact just be hosed down in case of emergency. Because of the height of “the new den”, we were able to accommodate, how do you say…a huge fucking tree. Now, you city folk might be wondering how one goes about procuring a ginormous tree. Well, it goes a little something like this.
- Cram entire family into family car that isn’t really big enough for five people to ride comfortably for over, say, 30 minutes, and drive the 4 hours to your mamaw’s farm in NC.
- Parental units and grandparent unit “visit” while the three young children are set loose on hundreds of acres of land to scout and then chop down the largest tree this side of the Mississippi, the largest of which was a whopping 45 feet (this beast was later “trimmed” to a modest 22 feet).
- The 3 young children drag world’s largest tree to the nearest clearing track big/safe enough to drive said family car close enough to the behemoth to tie her to the car with a series of ropes, cables, tarps and knots that dad was sure glad the scouts taught (dad can diagnose a kids’ illness from a mile away…can’t change a light bulb).
- Drive, the now what is double the drive time due to the giant tree that is triple the car’s length, home.
The securing of the tree. Luckily smarts are mostly genetic. And in our family, it’s a recessive gene, and it works a little something like this: dad and I know about medicine, the boys engineering, and mother, grammar and fun policing. While the engineering gene skipped father’s generation, both of my brothers have it. And I mean, big time. Once for fun, my brother took the engine out of his Jeep, took it apart, and put it back together…you know, to see how it works. He later grew up to design fire trucks…how cool is that? Anyway, the behemoth standing nearly 22 feet high after being “trimmed” down by the boys, had to be upright and secure. This requires the following steps:
- Move all the furniture in “the new den” to one side of the room. Drag the beast inside the house using a system of pulleys and child labor through the very well thought out parallel doors leading from the room to the outside on either side of the room.
- Take out huge white, old ass iron, tree stand with the giant, rusty jagged screws (remember when no one cared about safety? It was fun back then).
- Recruiting the boys’ friends from the neighborhood, the tree is up righted and placed, not gingerly, into the iron stand (remember when kids were expected to do manual labor not only at their house, but at their friends’ houses too?).
- Using a painter’s ladder, rudimentary scaffolding, and as ass load of high-test fishing wire, the beast is suspended at the top by the fishing wire strung through strategically placed hooks in the corner and on the ceiling of “the new den”. My brothers dangling like circus performers securing the beast as she would be too top heavy with the blessed angel on top to stay upright. I was busy readying the 7-Up and water mixture that all parents swore was the key to a fresh tree (7-Up which my family happened to have a plethora of as my grandfather would buy them by the gross ton as the commissary where he could “get a good deal” then dole them out as our consolation gift for visiting). The tree was watered and then the “real fun” began. This, this moment in history was the birthplace of “Forced Farish Family Fun”…
The decorating of the tree. Now, here’s something very cool about having a pediatrician dad in a small town: homemade gifts. Mother kept every ornament, handmade or otherwise that any of my dad’s patients ever gave him. So, fortunately for us, we had more than enough to adorn the beast.
- The boys would untangle the approximately 14 miles of lights (white lights, of course…we aren’t savages) while mother directed me on this year’s color scheme. Yes, there is a color scheme.
- Based on said year’s color scheme, the appropriate ribbons would have to be fluffed and readied for their strategic placement interwoven in the beast’s mighty limbs.
- Once the 14 miles of lights had been whittled down to the 9 miles that actually worked, even though dad SWORE we threw out all the non-working lights last year when we put all this crap away, using the same scaffolding and ninja like balance, the boys would string the lights up (insert the obligatory joke from father regarding the December power bill).
- At this point, the parental units would let us break for a short 15 minute nourishment and fluid break, then back to the mines!
- Long abandoned by our friends, we were left alone for the marathon of ornament hanging. Dad had jumped ship shortly after the securing of the tree to “go pay bills” in his office (i.e. read science magazines-hey I got it from somewhere) and mother was just hitting her stride. Dictating…I mean, directing the children, we worked in unison balancing on ladders, hanging from the cut-through from the kitchen to “the new den”, feeding and feeding the giant beast and endless supply of macramé and Popsicle photo frames, cooking-clay stars and shrinky-dinks of baby Jesus, tiny wooden reindeer and mason jar tins with nail hole patterns and lace sewn around the edges. Endlessly until she shifted with a sigh at the weight of it all. Then mother would take out the blessed angel, one of the boys would clammer up the scaffolding, cram that sucker on top, her halo just kissing the ceiling of the 25 foot room. The scaffolding and ladders taken down, we gazed in awe of the adorned beast, waiting to have her offerings stuffed underneath her for Christmas morn.
The adoration of the tree. From near and far they would come, to marvel at the wonder that was the beast. It confounded people, defying physics. How could something so large, with so many ornaments stand proudly, upright, in the corner of “the new den”? How did the beast’s limbs not crack and break under the pressure of mother’s ceramic manger scene ornaments that she made when she went through her “ceramics” phase? How did the glorious blessed angel that, let’s face it, would have been just at home at Rockefeller plaza not sag the top of the beast? How did the 22 foot beast not rip from her invisible chains and topple, destroying “the new den”? What engineering marvel dared defy physics and attempt to tame this beast? Oh, how the 7-Up and water mixture made her needles shine! Why, why did those crazy Farishes slay a beast, strap her to their Datsun puke green station wagon, drag her across 2 states, string her up and adorn her with all the weight of years of memories? Genetics, baby. Genetics.
Ciao Y’all 