For my first sixty or so years of life our Christmas tree was a wild, shaped by nature not by shears, sort of tree - and was, when living here in Maryland, usually what we colloquially called an Elk Neck Pine that I or my father before me cut in the then semi-wilds of Elk Neck. However the press of rapidly expanding developments and population density stopped that holiday rite some time ago. So I grudgingly gave in to the 'buy-a-tree' idea and the artificial look of a geometric cone-shaped tree that grew in some old hay field rather than the natural sprawling uniquely shaped old wild pine. This particular tree farm was pointed out to me by my older son. When I first went there some fifteen odd years ago I was pleased by the pleasantness of the 'old fellow' (he was some few years older than me at the time and though not active now in the sales is still going at 98) running the operation and was able to swallow my chagrin at 'buying' what amounts to a manufactured tree. By now I accept it fairly graciously but still feel a nostalgia for the 'good-old-days'. So yesterday - the 21st, for I still am a Christmas-Eve-put-up-the-tree person even though this has slipped back to maybe the day before Christmas eve - I drove out through the still lovely rural country side to once again perform this centuries old historic ritual of bringing an evergreen tree into the house during the time of the winter solstice, though now it has became associated with most people to the birth of Christ.
