When our daughter asked us to join her in a tree cutting expedition, I was thrilled; for never had I gone on this All American kind of expedition, but I'd read about it in books. It's most likely that I trudged through the deep snow with Laura Pa, Ma, Mary and little Carrie, in Little House in the Big Woods, or one of the following books written by Laura Ingalls Wilder.
As a fan of the most iconic chronicler and artist of American culture, I'd seen it in a Norman Rockwell painting--I was sure. I found two paintings memorializing the Christmas tree expedition.
And then there were my own family stories. My mother grew up in a loving family, a make-due family. They wouldn't have gone to a Christmas tree lot, if there was such a thing, but they would have made their way to Mt. Charleston and cut their own.
I doubt if permits were required back then.
How I wish my father were alive to ask if they had had a Christmas tree. Older than my mother, he remembers well the disappointments of a child during the depression. In his immigrant-parent home, they may have foregone the tradition. I can't imagine their practical and frugal lifestyle including a drive to the mountains to cut a Christmas tree.
For wThe further we are wrapped up in technology and convenience, the more we depend on others for our needs and pleasures, the more novel the old ways become: growing our own food, making cheese, keeping a goat, even cutting our own Christmas trees.
I can't tell you how pleasurable the afternoon was. We joined the adventurous elite! The people with time, transportation, and patience to hike through the snow in pursuit of a Christmas tree. There was a purity in doing for ourselves what we usually depend on others to do for us.
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