For as long as I can remember, Christmas has always been a big deal in the Alexander household.
It all started with my mom, who was the youngest in her family, and, boy, did she love Christmas!
Mom got so excited on Christmas Eve she couldn’t sleep through the night and, yes, Mom was always the first one up on Christmas morning and always in her newest Christmas morning attire.
For some unknown reason, she thought it was her duty to get everyone up to check out their stockings as soon as the dark of the night was pushed aside by the sunrise.
That was perfectly fine by me and my brother and sister because it marked the beginning of another marvellous, fun day.
As we got a bit older, Mom found better ways to wake up her sleepyheads on Christmas morning.
I, for one, didn’t like the clickity-clack of the wooden spoon going over our bedroom doorways down the hallway in an effort to wake us up early.
That annoyance quickly turned to joy when we stumbled into the living room and saw that Mom had the stockings laid out in the order of where we would sit on Christmas morning.
The seating arrangements were designated the previous evening after the cookies for Santa and the carrots for the reindeer had been placed on the fireplace hearth.
We always opened stockings and presents from youngest to oldest, much to my chagrin.
Despite what I thought were perfectly good debating points to reverse the pattern, my arguments were always shot down by my grandmother’s or grandfather’s authoritative end-of-argument glares.
The youngest-to-oldest gift opening tradition continues in our family to this day. I’m still on the short end of the stick even though I am the elder statesman of the family – the authoritative end-of-argument glares come from my daughters and my wife. I smile, then we all laugh and the family tradition continues unmarred.
Letters to Santa
Because I’m my mother’s son, I have always tried to make the yuletide season special for my children.
It started with the tradition of mailing the annual what-I-want-for-Christmas letters to Santa Claus and photos of the girls dropping their letters into the post office bin. The exercise was the signal for two things – the beginning of the shopping list and the start of the girls, and later their little brother, being extra good because Santa Claus was always watching.
Perfect Christmas tree
We also started our traditional Christmas tree hunt. It was a great idea and a lot of fun when we first started, but the hunting days were long and somewhat tedious, especially during the big snow winters when trudging through the snow was difficult for the children. When the baby brother came along, he got carried by his mom and the girls took turns being piggybacked. Our oldest and wisest daughter argued for the “Dad, you have to stomp a trail for the one who isn’t being piggybacked” - thanks to my wife, Kris, I lost another debate and had to carry a daughter, saw, lunch and the camera bag.
We bought a sleigh the following year and, yes, I ended up dragging that too, but I refused to carry the girls who were getting bigger and heavier. So, I would lead the way and stomp a good trail.
The following year when it was time to go find our perfect Christmas tree, the girls complained long and hard about having to join the hunt. During their complaints, they noted their friends all have store-bought, or artificial Christmas trees – egad, blasphemy.
We bribed them into going on the (final) hunt for another perfect real Christmas tree by inviting the family of their friends to go with us.
It was a blast. The adults shared the workload, and watching kids having fun in the snow, playing hide-go-seek and ambushing the adults with a snowball attack was great fun.
We ended getting three nice trees – one each for the families and one for their friend’s grandmother.
And that was it for the family Christmas tree hunts.
I became the designated Christmas tree hunter after that and, of course, we had our biggest dump of snow the day before I went out by myself.
To make things worse, I unwisely changed the area where I was going to hunt for a tree, so I didn’t have the knowledge of where the good trees were, and I didn’t know if there was a better Christmas tree just around the corner.
I spent a long day wading through the deep snow.
During my search, perfection and I got farther and farther away from where I parked my truck, but I marked my trail by wrapping surveyor tape on the trees where I changed directions.
Around 3:30 p.m., I found a perfect, eight-foot-tall Blue Spruce.
After I walked around the tree to make sure there were not any imperfections, I cut it down.
As soon as saw the tree down on the snow, I picked it up started dragging it in the direction of the truck.
Then, a flurry of thick fluffy snow blew in on me from the direction where I parked the truck. Within a few minutes, the flurry turned into a full-blown snowstorm.
Immediately, I had trouble finding the taped tree because I couldn’t see very far with the snow blowing into my eyes.
I stopped in my tracks, pulled out my binoculars and glassed the nearby hills and, thankfully, I saw one of the taped trees.
Pleased with myself, I put my binoculars in my backpack, and then realized I was losing light.
I picked up the Christmas tree and was ready to head toward the taped tree, when I looked over my shoulder and spotted a hummingbird nest in another nice-looking tree.
Then I noticed this tree was a bit smaller, but the equally perfect tree would make a unique Christmas tree for our home.
So I cut it down and tied it into the bigger tree and proudly thought how excited my girls would be with the two trees I was bringing home.
By the time I reached the truck, it was pitch dark.
As I loaded the trees into my truck, I knew my wife would be worried that I didn’t come home before dark.
I was right, but her disappointment melted when I pulled the two trees off the truck.
Then the children came outside to look at the Christmas trees brought home and they were pleased with the big blue Spruce.
However, when I showed them the smaller tree with a hummingbird nest in it, there was a unanimous vote it was going to be our Christmas tree that year.
I was very pleased with myself … until my youngest daughter asked, “Can we get a Christmas tree with a bird’s nest in it next year, too?”
Right then and there, I decided we would keep the nest when we took the decorations off the tree after Christmas.
However, it got worse when the ladies of the family told the relatives we visited in the Lower Mainland that they had a bird’s nest in their Christmas tree, and “I [Dad and husband] could probably find one for you!”
As luck would have it, we went to the Lower Mainland for Christmas celebrations the following year, and in the fall I got an order for five “perfect Christmas trees with bird’s nests in them.”
It took me the better part of a week to find five great Christmas trees, and three of them had bird nests in them. Before we left to go down to the Big Smoke, all five trees had a nest. However, two of the nests were transplanted.
To keep the girls from spilling the beans, I didn’t mention the transplant operations so they couldn’t tell our city relatives.
All of the city folks were very pleased with their real Christmas trees and the bird nests were a focal point.
Then in October the following year, I started getting requests for another “special real Christmas tree.”
By that time, we had moved to Ashcroft, and fortunately, I could tell the city slicker relatives we no longer lived near the magical Christmas tree forest.
However, my drive to keep the magic of Christmas alive never faded, but that is a story for another time.