The grandsons’ tree selection must pass the E-mama test. Somehow, it always does.
Photo Courtesy of Bruce Ingram / Styling by Janette Spencer.
The Blue Ridge Mountains are home to numerous Christmas tree farms where perfectly sculpted white pines and spruces adorn the highlands. As popular and beautiful as these trees are, Elaine and I have never purchased one.
After we moved to our Botetourt County, Virginia, land in 1989, we bought a series of live white pines for Christmas trees. After the holidays concluded, we planted them on our land. It was a joy to see, say, our tree for 1992, 15 feet taller a decade later. But for the last six years, we’ve deployed only Virginia pines or red cedars (two of the scrawniest and ill-shaped evergreens imaginable) as Christmas trees.
That’s because for those most recent holiday seasons, our grandsons Sam and Eli (ages 10 and eight, respectively) have been in charge of selecting a tree. Every year in mid-December, the boys and I ramble across our 38 acres in search of what they believe will make the perfect Christmas tree. Indeed, for generations many rural folks have followed the same tradition in these mountains. After all, how could any store-bought tree compare to one originating from a family’s own woodlot. Even though, as Elaine says, “There have been years when the tree had only two usable branches, and the boys used them for every decoration, a conga line of Christmas ornaments.”
After much discussion and sometimes a few arguments, Sam and Eli have to jointly agree on a tree for them to cut down with loppers. Then we haul the tree back to the house where Elaine has to decree whether the pine or cedar meets her expectations…which, of course, she always does—no matter how scraggly the thing is.
This past December, though, our annual excursion did not unfold smoothly…and it was all my fault. As usual, Sam and Eli came running across the hollow where they live with their parents… Sam breathlessly yelling that he had earlier found the perfect tree. My older grandson soon showed me a five-foot-tall red cedar, characterized by its barren limbs, crooked trunk and brown, droopy needles.
When I agreed with Sam about the tree’s charms, he went to our garage to retrieve loppers. Throughout the felling and shaping of the future yule-time centerpiece, Eli remained strangely silent. But when his brother left with Elaine to position the newly crowned Christmas tree in the kitchen doorway (where tradition demands that it should always reside) and to search the garage for decorations, Eli expressed his sense of betrayal and the general unfairness of being the younger sibling.
“I didn’t get to help pick a tree this year,” he sniffled. “Sam always gets his way. And his tree is ugly.”
Elaine and I have learned that a cardinal rule for grandparents is to always treat grandchildren equally, and I had broken that statute. Pondering how to make things right, I spontaneously came up with a solution.
“E-mama [their name for Elaine] wants holly decorations all over the house this Christmas,” I said. “Would you mind being totally in charge of finding holly branches and cutting them off for her?”
“Yessss!” Eli instantly responded, his countenance brightening, and off we went scouring our woodlot for holly trees. A half hour later, laden with branches, we entered Elaine’s kitchen where I pre-empted my wife’s questioning about what that greenery was for by announcing: “E-mama, Eli got those holly branches that you so much wanted.”
We were also just in time for Eli to help Sam decorate the newly christened Christmas tree. Elaine, sensing somehow that her husband had committed some kind of snafu (why does she always assume that?) deftly divided decorations between the boys and proclaimed that it was Eli’s turn to position the star crowning the cedar, which no longer looked so forlorn. She added that later the boys would have to help her craft holly arrangements. And so a new family tradition came into existence.
The story above first appeared in our November / December 2023 issue.
