ANDRE BEGIN

Throughout my first holiday season, in my first house, with my first Christmas tree, I basked in the glow of my twinkling tree and its fabulous aroma. That is, until January arrived.

No sooner had we finished singing “Auld Lang Syne” that the tree’s needles started dropping, the branches were stiff as a board and its fresh forest aroma was but a faded memory.

A few days before the recycling truck was scheduled to pick up used Christmas trees, I began the process of removing the decorations one-by-one and returning them to their designated boxes. Once the tree was back to its original state, I removed the screws that supported the tree in its stand, and pulled the tree up and onto a pile of newsprint to absorb any leftover water. “This seems too easy”, I thought to myself, having taken down the tree and the ornaments in a fraction of the time it took to put them up.

I spoke too soon.

The challenge came when I had to get the tree down the flight of stairs from the dining room to the front door.

By this point, the tree was more than double the width it was when it came into the house. Despite my commitment to daily watering, the branches were all in arbour rigor mortis mode and getting stuck between the posts of the banister like a giant green claw. It was as if the tree was saying, “I don’t wanna go!” The tree resisted my attempts to escort it out gently with the respect and reverence I believed it deserved.

With no progress to be found, I returned the tree to the dining room level and flipped the tree around, hoping that pulling the tree from the bottom of the trunk might work better. However, with the branches pointing straight outward, offering next to no flexibility, they remained unforgiving.

So much for my hope of getting the tree out as gently and as neatly as possible to minimize the number of dropped needles. I decided that a slightly more forceful approach was needed.

In a scene not unlike one might find in a traditional Saturday morning cartoon, I took a deep breath, moved the tree back a couple of feet and then pulled the tree down the stairs with every ounce of strength I could summon.

Fortunately, I succeeded in getting most of the tree out to the street. Unfortunately, the rest of it was left on the staircase, in the banister, in the adjacent rooms, the entry hall, the entry hall closet, and the basement, even though the tree never actually visited the basement.

Despite my usual thoroughness when it comes to cleaning, my expectations were already managed. I knew from my own experience that no matter how thoroughly you think you’ve cleaned up after a Christmas tree, a few stray needles can jump up and surprise us on the hottest day of summer when walking around in bare feet.

I was OK with that. I knew that this was part of the package deal with a real Christmas tree.

Just the same, I began the clean-up, with the vacuum cleaner clinking away continuously as it picked up handfuls of fallen needles. As the vacuum cleaner got warmer, the forest smell I enjoyed through the holiday season wafted back to say goodbye. What a wonderful reminder it was for me to say thanks to the tree for the joy it brought, the memories it brought back and the new traditions it helped me create in my new home.

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Sincere thanks for reading!
Have a great day,
André