Smells Like Christmas
The pickings were slim and the trees unimpressive, and yet I was incredibly happy to be looking over the “fresh cut” pines in the Lowe’s parking lot one night earlier this week. I got it in my head somehow that this year I’ll have a real Christmas tree instead of putting up the hand-me-down artificial one I’ve been using. My fake tree has been perfect for my stage of life: it’s the right size, the right price ( free ), and most of the lights work most of the time. The presents look nice underneath it. By all accounts, it works. But the smell of the real trees in the open-walled tent that night transformed my wish for a real tree from a whimsical one-off into something much more tender. I wasn’t prepared for how the scent of the pines would conjure up the memories of searching for the right tree as a family. Every year until I was about 20 years old, we would make the pilgrimage to various Christmas tree lots to find the tree . We always bought a noble fir, the tallest one that could fi...
