- Every year my dad picked out the family Christmas tree on a nearby farm.
- After he had his stroke, we came up with a way to continue to include him in the tradition.
- We kept this new version of our ritual for over a decade.
We want holiday traditions to be static, every year repeat the last. In reality, children grow, parents age, divorces happen, and jobs change, forcing us to adapt to new circumstances. We learned this when my father had a stroke, and we struggled to keep him involved in our annual tree pick-up – a ritual he had started.
Decorate for Christmas was a task my father loved, and finding the perfect tree was a contemplative task. At Nick’s, the few-tree sheep farm we went to every year, he studied spruce, fir and balsam. When he found a promising one, he shook the snow off a branch and imagined how the lights would drape. Most of the trees were too fat, too full, and after what seemed like forever, my dad finally made up his mind.
Our family repeated the tree retrieval ritual year after year
The older I got, the less I cared about my father’s measured pace. I didn’t become less impatient, just more appreciative. We kept coming to Nicks, and the trip unfolded sweetly and predictably. When my father asked our opinions, I knew I was voting for a full ear Christmas tree was worthless. The request for input was an opportunity for us to agree with his vision. As he cut down the tree with his rusty handsaw, we pulled it into a clearing for a snapshot. The three of us beamed next to our skinny tree, a scarf of impossibly soft hills behind us.
Dad took pictures with modest Kodaks and thin disposables, tracking time and the expansion of our family. First we added Jack, my future husband, and then our first son. I appreciated the moment, a place in the year that always happened.
So when Dad had a stroke and went from a sprightly and goofy 70-year-old to a numb and humble guy, we had to keep him connected. The first year we couldn’t bring him because he was just getting his strength back. But when we brought the tree to my parents’ house, we drank hot cocoa at the kitchen table and told him Nick said hi.
The author’s brother Nate drove his father to the Christmas trees on a four-wheeler. Courtesy of Amy Halloran
After my father’s stroke, we were determined to include him again
The next year my husband was determined to get my dad back to Nick. The thought scared me. How could we get a wheelchair onto the rocky field? My mom wouldn’t let that happen! Fortunately, Jack ignored my resistance and hatched a plan with Nick to use a hay wagon, with a quad as a backup, to get my father up into the trees.
When Jack suggested this, my parents said yes. They trusted him. He is a dancer and a tree surgeonand when my father was still able, he sometimes helped Jack at work. Wearing a helmet, he pulled branches and helped lower limbs to the ground. Jack’s use of trigonometry to get the branches off a house really impressed him. “He’s a wonder,” said my father. Yes, he was, but this was the first time he would help someone in a wheelchair up a half-frozen field.
My mother sent us to the farm. We were a caravan of minibuses that accommodated my sister and her daughters, my brother, my family and my father. My sister and I helped our kids out of their car seats and put on their mittens. We helped Dad move from the car to his wheelchair and put on his gloves.
The event went off without a hitch. Most of us climbed onto the hay wagon, but it was too high to lift my father. Jack and my brother helped him on the quad, and my brother sat in front of him and drove. I was amazed that Jack had imagined this day in a new form.
At the top, Jack and my brother moved Dad back to his wheelchair and took turns pushing him through the patch of trees. The scrolling was rough, so he didn’t examine every possible one, but he got a good selection. When he found what he wanted, Jack got him in place so he could saw it down himself.
Pictures from this day show a gray sky and speckled snow, we are all smiles. We were just a family picking up our Christmas trees, a normal and happy thing. Did we regret that the day was different? We couldn’t, because the tradition was still repeatedjust changed.
The author’s father saws down his own Christmas tree every year. Photo credit: Nate Halloran
We continued the tradition in this new way until my father died
For the next dozen years we continued to go to Nicks. Instead of using the quad, Jack—and later our oldest son—towed my father uphill. They looked like beasts of burden pulling the patriarch. Jack tied a length of rope to the chair and stepped into the noose, pulling it up to his chest. We made our choices – ours was always sculptural, a twist of pine regrowth from a stump. The one for my parents’ house went on a deck, so it could be 15 or 20 feet tall. We set up at the outdoor photo studio and posed.
The year my father diedI don’t remember what happened.
We still get our tree at Nick’s. A young family now shares the tradition, and it makes me miss my dad a little less. The trees are so tall that they have lost most of their lower limbs and made a bed of needles. As the little boys run through the little forest, they kick up a wonderful perfume of pine.
Their father is also a tree surgeon, and this year he climbed 15 feet up to chop down the top of a tree, which was still 20 feet tall, to use in a plaza. My family also chose a 20-footer and has it on deck that my youngest, a 21-year-old, built this summer. All of this rhymes with the traditions that Dad started.
Family rituals doesn’t work because we repeat them without having done it. They work because we bring a feeling through a moment, sewing up time. We work as tailors and make adjustments to keep everyone, alive and remembered, inside.
