O Christmas Tree

He is like a tree, planted by rivers of waters…

Psalm 1:3

Christmastime in the Poulson household meant a fresh, live Christmas tree in the living room, the biggest and best that my father could find – always set up and decorated on the Friday after Thanksgiving.  The woodland perfume of the tree permeated the entire house, and the Christmas lights were on from dusk until bedtime.  We played around the tree, we ate around the tree, and we read and conversed around the tree.  It was the living centerpiece of our Christmas celebrations.

I continued the tree tradition with my own family, always putting up a fresh tree, even if we had to purchase it on Christmas Eve when they were greatly discounted or free.  One Christmas in Lynchburg, we decided to take our daughters out to a Christmas tree farm and choose/cut our own tree.  It was bitterly cold that winter, but we bundled up on a blustery Friday morning and tramped through the snow in the brilliant sunshine, inspecting one tree then another – checking out size and shape like true tree connoisseurs.  The girls finally found the “perfect” specimen; we cut it down, hauled it home, and proceeded to decorate it with all of our family ornaments and treasures.  That evening we lounged around the tree, enjoying the sparkling lights and the warmth of the fireplace.

Saturday morning I was the first one up, and came down the stairs to turn on the tree lights and make some hot chocolate.  My squeal (yell?) of utter dismay woke the entire household.  Four other pairs of slippers thundered down the stairs, only to grind to a halt in the foyer, gazing in disbelief at our Christmas tree in the corner of the living room.  Radiating out from the tree – across the floor, up the walls, down the baseboard cracks – was a moving mass of… bugs!!  Already six feet in circumference on the floor and near the ceiling on the walls, the crawling gnat-size creatures were intent on invading the entire house: the living room sofa only inches away.  [TO BE CONTINUED]