The weekend before Christmas, my parents and siblings would pack into the family van and drive to the country to find the perfect tree. Sometimes our neighbor, Liz and her two children (and our playmates), Michael and Catherine, would join us to get their tree too. We would hike up and down hills covered with blue spruce, Fraser and Douglas firs, leaving scarfs and mittens on trees we thought might be contenders. And if we complained about why we had to wait so long when all of our friends had their trees up for weeks, we’d hear how when my father was a kid, the tree and all the decorations would come Christmas Eve after the children went to bed. Santa brought it all. The adults stayed up half the night, reveling and decorating and Christmas morning wonder was not just over the gifts, but a room’s yuletide transformation. I’ve since discovered that it was once considered unlucky to put up Christmas decorations before Christmas day. Clearly the powers of American commerce and capitalism trumped that tradition as they push the holidays earlier and earlier into October each year.
