Leslie’s Blog

It was Christmas Day, almost noon. 

 The living room was swamped with crumpled wrapping paper, opened boxes, emptied stockings, and half finished mugs of coffee.  My live, balled and burlapped   Pinyon pine tree stood majestically festooned, with its morning bag of ice packed around the trunk on the root ball, cooling and watering it simultaneously.

It was the first Christmas that I had spent in that house next to the city park.  I hadn’t been in Texas very long, and I was still operating with my old set of ‘Yankee’ customs.  I didn’t know what happened in City parks on Christmas Day.

‘Yankee’ customs went something like this …

Buy your tree and decorate it about two weekends to ten days before Christmas.

Leave the tree up until the middle of January.  That will insure that all the relatives will  be able to get a look at it if they visit,  depending on how prohibitive the snow and ice would make travel that year.

Christmas lights could remain on the house until Valentines Day, again dependant upon weather conditions allowing, or not, their removal.

Christmas was not “officially” over until that last present under the tree fell into the possession of its’ intended.

Texas customs go something like this …

If you don’t have all  your lights and wreaths and garlands up, your tree situated and decorated, presents bought, wrapped and under the tree, and your plane reservations made by the day after Thanksgiving, you are  obviously  not a Texan, and are just going to miss all  the Christmas fun.

So it was to my great astonishment, and horror, to rub the frosty condensation from the window pane, to peer out at the quietude of the Day, and see an immense pile of Christmas trees piled in the park next door, right outside.  Green ones, flocked ones, pink ones, they were all piled twenty feet high, thirty feet around, under the park sign.   I couldn’t believe my eyes!  

“Why are all these trees in the park?!” I yelled.

“The City picks them up at the park, and takes them to the landfill.” came the answer. “Keeps the dumpsters from fillin’ up.”

“That’s not what I mean!”  I whined with a pained, twisting sound.

 I was having trouble making my brain wrap around this scenario.

 “It’s Christmas  DAY !”  I shrieked.

Sure enough, as efficiently as Texans erect their Christmas, they efficiently deconstruct it …  at the traditionally appointed time, which happens to be starting at twelve noon on Christmas Day, when the Holiday is “officially” over.   If you are travelling to Dallas for the rest of your vacation, you  don’t  want that  tree  there when you get  back.   Simple as that.

So I stood there and looked.  I tried not to look, but it was like a trainwreck that had and hadn’t happened.  I’m sure the locals thought nothing of it, as it was what they had made tradition.  I, on the other hand, was suffering extreme culture shock.  No visions of wassailing would form for me.

I cried as the cars would pull up, one by one, and the trees that had only moments before been the center of attention, were hurled unceremoniously onto the ever growing pile of sacrifice.

When I am faced with overwhelming mind scrooging, I try to come up with something constructive to think about, or at least something less repulsive.

Here was my plan…

Instead of the City spending taxpayer dollars to collect and dispose of the trees  after  Christmas, they should sell the trees, live and balled and burlapped,  before  Christmas.  If people wanted to donate the trees back to the City after the holiday, as a tax deductible donation, the City workers could then plant the trees in the parks.  Or the Christmas tree owners could plant them in their yard as a permanent keepsake.  The big winner here being the TREES.

So I wrote letters.  I wrote to the newspaper, the Optimists Club, the City Parks Department, the bird sanctuary club, the Jaycees, and all the local plant nurseries.  I encouraged the charities to sell trees as a fund raiser.  I encouraged the nurseries to stock a larger selection of live, rooted trees of a variety that would thrive in west Texas.  I implored the City to consider my request.

I heard nothing back.  I didn’t expect to.  But I knew I had come up with a brilliant solution, and my mind was balmed, some.  I knew I had planted Christmas tree seeds.

A few years later, much to my surprise, when I received my monthly utility bill for water and garbage disposal, there was an insert in the envelope explaining a NEW great idea provided by the City.  It outlined, almost verbatim, my plan for the city to receive and plant your donated live Christmas tree.

I saved that insert, and the first draft of my letter.  I spent the day today trying to locate the insert.  I couldn’t find it, but I did find my letter.   

I looked up the City website, but didn’t find reference to the Christmas tree program.  I did find this link to Keep Midland Beautiful’s page with its Yuletide Guide to ” Using Less Stuff “.    All the way at the bottom of the page is the sentence, “If you wish to buy a “live” tree this year, but have no place to plant a tree, have we got a deal for you!  The City of Midland will pick up the tree free of charge.  The tree will be planted in a city park or a schoolyard.”

Bah-Ha!  What a great idea!

Leslie