Over the weekend my family and I got our Christmas tree. It’s a beaut. Nice and full, smells fantastic, strung up with lights it illuminates the study. We love this year’s tree. On top of everything, it was exceedingly easy to get. There is a small farm down the street from us that sells trees only one or two weekends a year. This is because the farm is, as I said a second ago, small. Once they sell out, they sell out. So, we got lucky this year as there were plenty left. Last year, we were not so lucky. We waited too long and when we went down to pick out our tree, the cupboard was empty. Woe was us. My wife did what modern millennial wives do. She went on Facebook, searched around her community and mom pages and found a place in the town next to ours that had plenty of trees left. You picked your own, cut it down yourself and tied it to the car yourself. For these reasons, the price was more than reasonable. So, we piled into the car and headed out to get our tree. We were not prepared.

The place was about 25 minutes from our house, way out in the hinterlands of our neck of the woods of Connecticut. When we arrived, we noticed that we were the only car and the farm seemed to be hidden behind a rather enormous hill. It was a cold day, but we were bundled up and the kids were thrilled with the prospect of getting our tree. Nice and sunny, blustery and crisp. We headed up towards the farmhouse and around the back where there was one of those machines that definitely has a name that I just don’t know. Ya know the ones I am talking about; the machine that wraps your tree in plastic twine. Anyway, there was one of those machines, a rack of hand saws and a guy sort of hanging around. He was the owner of the farm and explained the situation to me.

Farmer: “Hey, guys. Listen, there’s not many trees left. In fact, we weren’t sure we were going to be open today and we’ll probably shut down in a couple hours. But whatever you find out there is yours.”
Me: “….Ok…. Is it worth it or is there nothing left?”
Farmer: “No there are trees out there. Just not many and not very full. You are welcome to take a look.”
Me: “So, it’s worth it then? I just don’t want to take the kids up over this big hill in the cold if there’s nothing left, you know?”
Farmer: “Yeah, I get it.”
Me: ……
Farmer: ……
Me: “Alright, dude. Just give me the saw.”

And from there we headed up the hill. It was a substantial little climb for my wife and myself so you can imagine what it was like for a 2- and 3-year-old. They were troopers though. I have to hand it to them. Out of the entire time we were out in the field, which was probably about 40 minutes, they gave us a good 3-3.5 minutes of decent behavior before they lost it. After we crested the hill, we were finally face to face with the fact that this may have been a bad idea. I am guessing there were about 15 acres of rolling, hilly fields in front of us. Trees? In theory, yes. We almost headed back to the car at that point, but we were already there, and we’d be damned if we’d let our better judgement win the day. We pressed forward.

To say that there was a definite shortage of trees would be an understatement. Frankly, I wasn’t even sure these people had even planted any trees by the spotty nature of where they were growing. All of them looked pretty ratty. None of them were full and healthy. They looked like they had rough lives. Divorced, unemployed and fighting addiction. These trees hadn’t spoken to their kids in ages. If you listened closely, you could hear them gently sobbing. I think I heard one of them cough. Anyway, we went on looking for the family Christmas tree. For some reason, it seemed to get colder and then as if like clockwork, the whining started. They were cold. They wanted juice. They were hungry. They were tired. They were bored. I was with them in spirit, but I couldn’t show it. Since my wife had picked the place out, I could see that she was starting to feel guilty. It wasn’t her fault, but she was starting to get annoyed. She also doesn’t do well in the cold. The woman sleeps under a fleece blanket and comforter in the Summertime. I kicked it into high gear and left the family in the dust as they were slowing me down. I needed to find a tree, any tree.

There were now other groups of people out there with us. Each with the same look of bewilderment and frustration on their faces. Had we been duped? Were there ever trees there? Were the farmers essentially “harvesting” us with a false advertisement for cheap fir trees? All possibilities were on the table at this point. I should also mention that the terrain was a real pain in the keister. These were not well-kept fields made for folks to go traipsing through. These were quintessential New England fields in the late Fall, early Winter. Overgrown, dead, brambly and thorny. They were difficult for my wife and I to trudge through as adults so you can imagine what it was like for the kids. That is when we realized that they were falling every four or five feet. You’d hear a yowl and look back and there’d be a man down. I raced up a little hill where I saw a cluster of trees that seemed half-way decent. I raced as I knew it was a matter of time before the other groups of suckers spotted them and then it’d be game on. Game on with a group of angry, cold yankees each armed with a hand saw. I got to the top of the little hill and looked back down into the fields. What I saw was absolutely astounding. Sporadic groups of people slowly making their way through the fields, stumbling, swearing and yelling. That’s when I spotted my family.

Have you ever seen Gettysburg? Or The Patriot? If you haven’t, I suggest you do as they are both highly entertaining flicks. During the battle scenes, scores of uniformed men walk in tight lines determinately towards each other. Here and there, men will scream and drop as they get hit by either musket or cannon fire. Very historically accurate to 18th and 19th century infantry warfare tactics. That is what my little family looked like. There they were. The three of them, close together moving in the same direction. Every once in a while, either my son or my daughter would let out a loud “AHHH!” and they’d go down. My wife, in the middle, would stop and lift them up. Much like a soldier picking up a flag after the standard bearer had been brough down by enemy fire. They would move on together another few feet and then there’d be a scream or an “OHHH!” and another would go down. My wife, the non-com of this squad all the while urging them forward. “C’mon! Let’s go!” “Get up! Keep moving!” This was going on in the middle of a field with other small groups of people doing similar. To this day, it was the most hilarious thing I had ever seen. Horrible, but hilarious.

I cut down the least diseased-looking tree I could find and began to head back down the hill. I went down the opposite side of where I had come up after seeing that my family was making their way to the right around the hill heading back towards the main path that led back to the farmhouse. As soon as they came into view, I saw my daughter walking while crying loudly and my wife hurriedly moving to catch up with her with my son under her right arm like a baby pig. He was crying too. My wife was probably crying on the inside. I noticed that he was only wearing one shoe. I yelled down to her about the shoe situation and she responded with, “I DON’T CARE! WE’LL BUY HIM NEW SHOES ON THE WAY HOME!” Now, this woman scowls at me if I buy a bagel for breakfast during the week. She is not a cheapskate by any means, but she is conscientious of the family finances and doesn’t go in for wasteful spending. So, when she suggested that we buy him new shoes rather than spend another minute on that farm, I knew she had gotten to the end of her rope. I got down the hill quickly and traced their steps back and found his shoe. We reunited and headed back towards the farmhouse together.

Farmer: “There they are! Hey, you guys got a good one!”
Me: “Yeah it sure is something else.”
Farmer to my daughter who was sniffling and crying a little: “What’s wrong there?”
My wife: “Her hand is bleeding from falling down so much.”
Farmer: “Oh.”

By this point, we were freezing cold and tired. The kids had stopped crying because I promised them happy meals. Our mission was over. It was accomplished. The tree itself, was nothing to look at. It wasn’t all that full and definitely had some sorry branches there and there. It was lopsided as well. We got it home, strung it with lights and decorated it. It ended up being the healthiest Christmas tree we’d had in years. Lost no needles, stayed nice and green and we ended up loving it. Once I had tied it onto the roof of the car, we began our journey back home. It took a while to warm up enough to get to the point where we could actually speak about the ordeal without our teeth chattering. After a few minutes of commiserating over the conditions and situation. We were relieved to have gotten it out of our systems. Smiles were creeping back. The kids were giggling, and all was right with the world. That is when I took a hard right turn to get back on the main drag that would bring us home, only to have the tree fall off the car.