The Ugly Christmas Tree Story and Other Yuletide Remembrances
Posted: Thursday, December 11, 2008
by Mike Fak
http://mikefak.com
My dad used to tell me a story of "The Ugly Christmas Tree" when I was a youngster. I was maybe five or six the first time he pulled it on me and he did it for a few years until he figured I was old enough to know he was buffaloing me.
The story sort of went that there was a really poor looking tree in the forest and all the other trees made fun of it because it looked small and scrawny and crooked and had sparse areas where branches should have been.
Of course when the poor family that couldn't afford a nicer tree adorned it with all their ornaments, the tree looked pretty good. The little tree, hearing people brag about how good he looked started standing up a little straighter and started moving its branches around to look all the better for the family who had saved it from the burn pile.
As the story went, By Christmas morning, the tree was now one of the most majestic trees the family had ever seen. The lesson being that when people have faith in a person (or a tree I imagine) that self-confidence can change everything.
Now there was a method to my father's storytelling that really didn't have anything to do with a fable about confidence. The story was pushed by my father because he never made it to the tree lot until just a day or two before Christmas. By then all the good looking trees had already been bought. That left searching for the least ugly tree out of a bunch that needed to be cut into branches for wreaths or thrown in the barrel to keep the sellers warm
I was happy to help make these ugly trees look beautiful and save the self-confidence of these poor little trees that had been so badly shaken.
In fact after the first year when I tried to place an ornament too high and had pulled the entire tree over on me, there was a rope around the middle of ensuing trees with the two ends screwed into the woodwork. When visitors would come over and ask why the tree was tethered to the walls, dad would just point at me. I recall everyone just going Oh, and nodding their heads.
I remember fondly how dad would work and toil trying to get the base of those crooked trees shaped so they would sit in a tree stand. Those crooked trees were another reason they had to be roped to the woodwork. A little loser on one end of the rope, a little tighter on the other and voila, the tree with an incredibly crooked base stood straight up and down.
I remember mom always trying to decide which side should be against the wall and being frustrated because every side needed to be against the wall.
I remember dad sitting on the rug with a hornet's nest of lights all twisted and tangled. Finally when done those old lights wouldn't work and he had to unscrew and screw each bulb until he found the one that had broken the circuit and the strand would light up.
Of course no sooner were the lights put on the tree when a strand would go out and dad would spend forever trying to find the bad bulb in a sea of lights and evergreen branches.
Like Darrin McGavin in a Christmas Story, my dad refused to give up until he found the bad bulb. Again like the dad in Christmas story, I learned many new words during those days of Christmas frustration from my father.
Those days are long gone now, swept away along with the needles of so many ugly trees a half-century ago. I will remember those days and I will remember that story as long as I live.
In case you are wondering, I never had to use the story on my son. Instead I used the one about the ugly artificial Christmas tree instead.
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Top-level comments on this article: (3 total)Hi Mike.Thanks. This is wonderful.DianneThanks Diannne. Glad you liked it. Mike
Mike,Are you sure your talking about a Christmas tree or.....YOU??Jim GriffinIf you look at my mug, you can tell I'm no beauty. But at least I have hair...on my head that is.ThanksMike
hi mike,i was just thinking of my dad doing the same, and how we only had the big, fat bulbs, and how something that was supposed to be a "sacred", at least a happy event, of trimming the tree, never quite happened.thanks for sharing,best regards,sueThanks Sue. Actually our Christmases always were fun. Just not like the pictures on the Christmas cards though.Mike
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