THE BEAUTIFUL GREEN TREE

Easy reading is damned hard writing.            Nathaniel Hawthorne(1804-1864)

Growing up in Montreal, oh, what a blast on a cold, wintry day!  Blustery squalls, spinning like berserk Tasmanian Devils take your breath away.  It takes a half an hour just to get dressed in winter stuff and get out the door!

And it’s really bad after a big storm, when we get a major dump of snow.  It’s one of my chores, and my three sisters, to shovel out a parking space on the street, for my dad.  It needs to be cleared in time for him to park, when he gets home from work, around dinner time.  And, my baby sister really is useless because she is pretty little.  She doesn’t get an allowance yet either, because she doesn’t really do any chores, but then again, she doesn’t really know what an allowance is either.  She just likes to be outside with her three big sisters, which lasts maybe ten minutes and then she starts banging on the door, (she’s not tall enough to reach the doorbell), to be let into the house. 

Even with three young girls and six strong arms, our shovels are kinda small and sometimes it takes us a whole two or three hours to do after we get home from school.  Believe me, winter in Montreal pays, because even though my allowance is only a nickel a week, sometimes, if my mom’s feeling rich, it might go up to a dime if we have to shovel a lot.

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The approaching Christmas holiday is knocking on frosty windows and my school chums are breathless with excitement in anticipation of THE BIG DAY!  There is a Christmas tree in our classroom.  It’s a beautiful live tree, the greenest of green and has a pine scent that sure beats the stuff my mom puts in the mop water, when she washes the kitchen floor.  What a treat it is, going into my classroom for a week or two!  The fresh piney aroma smells so much better than wet socks and chalk.                 

My classmates and I work feverishly for days, making all the decorations for the Christmas tree from ‘scratch’.  Construction paper, twisted and turned and folded and scissored into wonderfully creative shapes and sizes, casts a rainbow of colours from the top to the bottom of our beautiful green tree.  Popcorn garlands and candy canes are especially fun to hang, with everyone sneaking a piece here and there, even the teacher.  The best decoration is saved for last.  The glowing white angel crowns the highest branch and looks upon us with peace and serenity.  What a fitting place for the guardian angel of our beautiful green tree!   

                                                                       

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A few days before Christmas break, the beautiful green tree would get to go home with someone.  The teacher asks us to write our names on small pieces of paper and one by one, we put them all in one of the kid’s toques.  Slowly rummaging around in the hat, the teacher finally pulls out that one special name and it was MINE! 

My excitement knows no bounds!  Dragging the beautiful green tree, now bare of all its glorious decorations,  I enthusiastically trudge toward home along slushy sidewalks, my head and tree barely visible above the snow banks, standing like sentinels guarding a castle.  I burst through the door and can hardly contain my glee as I announce to my mom, “I won the Christmas tree!  Isn’t it beautiful?” 

The look on my mother’s face is hard for a seven-year-old to understand but what came next isn’t.  “We’re Jewish.  No Christmas tree is coming into this house.” 

Shoulders sagging, eyes filling with tears, I struggle to understand what had gone so horribly wrong.  How could my beautiful green tree make my mother so upset?  I ran to my room, which I share with my three sisters, sobbing as if the world was ending. 

My dad got home from work a while later and I could hear my mother telling him about the beautiful green tree and how it arrived at our house.  Listening to their murmuring voices rising and falling, I doze off, exhausted from crying.

 My sister wakes me up to tell me supper is ready.  As I walk sullenly through the living room, what to my wondering eyes did I see, but my beautiful green Christmas tree, standing proudly in the corner.  A hand-lettered sign, simply proclaiming “Chanukah Bush”, propped on its branches, its one and forevermore only decoration.                                   

                 

                                       

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