First Tree Cut

THERE is a balsam fir in our living room. My first "real" Christmas tree. It stands tall and its tip is a foot away from the ceiling. It's a leany tree. We didn't have the proper base for it. So, for now its home is the orange Home Depot bucket we've filled with water and it leans on the corner of our living room where the TV used to be.

I like our tree. It's a friendly tree. But I guess I am still partial to the plastic Christmas tree of my youth.

***

The authentic Pinoy Christmas tradition is the parol, the star lantern. But, in addition to that, I grew up with our plastic Chrismas tree and grew up anticipating the gifts that would appear under it during Christmas.

I remember us buying the tree from SM Cubao. I must have been 7 or 8 years old. I have vague memories of another tree. An aluminum one with sparkly, foil-type leaves. Very 70s. It must have been trashed. Which was why we came home from Cubao one day with a 6-foot box of Christmas spirit. My dad and I were put in charge of putting it together after All Saints Day and putting it away by January. When I grew older, it became my sole responsibility.

I don't know what has become of my plastic tree. I assume it's still in our Culiat home, now my sister's home. Or it might have been sold by her no-good boyfriend.

***

It's a strange experience seeing the origins of a tradition you thought was yours. Here in Duluth, or maybe the rest of the US, getting a fake tree during Christmas is like not going to the cemeteries during All Saints Day. It's sacrilege. It happens, yes. But it's weird and non-traditional. (I have, by the way, never been to a cemetery during All Saints Day since 1996.) The practice of going into the woods to chop down a tree is a cherished childhood Christmas tradition. There is always, of course, the pre-chopped tree that can be purchased from the grocery store or at the mall. But these are real trees too. Not plastic. Not fake.

When C. and I arrived at the edge of Boulder Lake for the community tree cut, there were families with their children. Men with large saws, too big really to cut trees that are only 5 inches across at the base. C. and I brought a small wood saw. And after saying hello to my grad school cohorts (they were in charge of the program), we walked north to look for our balsam fir.

Crunching along in the new snow, we would stop once in a while to examine potential candidates. Some trees were the right height, but not leafy enough. Kind of nekkid. Some were leafy but too tall. Some looked perfect but were not the right kind of tree. Every once in a while, I would hear laughter or hoots in the woods. I could see Christmas. But it wasn't my Christmas. I could see it in C. as he scanned the woods for our tree with a childish excitement in his eyes.

I thought, so this is the Christmas tree tradition. Mine was just a copy. Really fake. In keeping with many Filipino things that are borrowed from the US. I felt that my Christmas memories had been cheapened somewhat. All along, I had a Christmas tree, but here was the real Christmas tree.

Serves me right for having a parent who worked at an American Air Base. I wished that I had been in charge of a parol instead of a plastic tree. We never even got a Capampangan parol. You know, the kind with the crazy, swirly lights. Or the delicate but beautiful parol made of capiz. I never experienced making one myself.

I felt bad for me and my fake tree. My childhood Christmas tradition was a plastic imitation, and I am a Filipino with a Russian name.