Cedar Tree Christmases

When I was a kid we always had a live cedar Christmas tree. We lived on a farm with 40+acres of woods that were filled with cedar trees. And we burned our own wood to help warm our house.

Most people have special pines or Frazier firs or even perfectly coiffed fake trees they get for Christmas. And isn’t it funny how you get used to what you get used to? Growing up, I just thought everybody went in their backyard woods and plucked up a cedar Christmas tree. Little did I know.

Into the woods we go…

Each December my Dad, brothers and I would traipse down into our woods and go in search of the perfect Christmas tree: not too tall, not too stout, not too dead on any one side. Some of our cedar trees in those woods were pretty tall and my dad never cared to cut down a big one only to lop off the top 5 feet for our Christmas tree.

So we tried to stick with trees that were under 7-8 feet. And did I mention it was a cedar tree, not a pine, not a Frazier fir? A cedar. If you’ve never seen a cedar tree, it’s a little more scraggly than the other polished pine trees. Did I mention it was also free? Other than the time it took to traipse through the woods, cut it down, and haul it up to the house.

Trimming the cedar Christmas tree

Dad would trim it down to size, level off the bottom, and get it so it fit in our house. We had unnaturally low ceilings, I want to say 6 foot ceilings? But it never bothered any of us because we were all a bit vertically challenged anyway.

For all of my growing up years this tree search and preparation was a Christmas tradition in our house. We’d put the tree in a tree stand of water with a couple of aspirin to help keep it alive longer.  Anyone else do the aspirin in the water thing?  And the house would smell of heavenly cedar!  It was officially the holidays when that happened.

Decorating our cedar Christmas tree

And then my mom took over. She’d untangle the strings of lights, check them for any burnt out bulbs (which would burn out the entire string). So we’d manually twist each bulb until we found the loose one or broken one. Mom would string the tree up with lights. My brothers and I would adorn it with ornaments taking precaution not to hang ornaments too close to a lightbulb as it could catch fire. Anyone else remember that? (I still find myself hanging ornaments far enough away from our LED lights to this day.) And every night, we’d sit in our living room with the Christmas tree lit up and inhale the cedar aroma.

A future without a cedar Christmas tree

As us kids grew up and started moving away, there weren’t any ‘backyards’ to go traipsing through to get a cedar tree. Heck, even tree lots didn’t sell cedar trees. What was it with these people? Did they not know cedar was THE Christmas tree!

Mom and Dad eventually gave up the cedar tree tradition and traded it in on a fake tree. In my empty-handed search for a cedar tree in the marketplace I instead bought one of the smallest, puniest, runt of a Christmas tree. In those days a fake one was blasphemous to me. Since then I’ve wizened up to the convenience and more eco-friendly version of a fake tree — prelit, store it in tubs in the basement, put it together in 4 pieces and voila, instant tree in 4 minutes.

Final Thoughts on cedar tree Christmases

I’ll never forget the cedar Christmas trees we had growing up. Those cedar trees hold a special place in my heart. Looking back on them, they were probably one of the ugliest of the conifers, scraggly, misshapen, and generally probably not a great tree to hang ornaments from. But I didn’t know any of that then. And to have that ignorance was truly bliss.

Now, trees are coordinated in color themes and coordinated ornaments or whatever ‘theme’ has been bestowed on it. And I guess there’s a joy in that too.

And we’ve participated in themed trees as well. Our family tree holds all of our kids’ ornaments and my husband’s and my ornaments from our years together. Another tree holds all of the bird ornaments we’ve collected since my husband is a bird nerd. And yet another tree holds all of the vintage ornaments from our grandparents of the past. Each of these trees holds meaning.

So I guess these staged trees just hold a different place in my heart.

What’s a tradition you had as a kid that you look back on now with fond memories? Leave a note in the comments. Let’s bring back some of that ‘vintage’ Christmas cheer.

To Christmas memories….

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Did you know I also have a series that features new projects I try out from other crafty designers? If you are interested in learning more about my New Project Spotlight series read my New Project Spotlight series welcome article.

I’m always looking for new projects to feature. What is a new project you’ve tried and liked? Would it be a good one to shine the light on in my New Project Spotlight series? Are you an awesome crochet artist with a design you’d like to see featured here? If so, leave me a note in the comments.

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