I had to go to Houston last week for a very, very, sad
occasion. It was a funeral for one of my grandsons.
Heck, you never expect your kids to go before you..let
alone your grandchildren so this was an incredibly hard
pill to swallow and he was only 19 years old so needless
to say, it was a very, somber occasion but everything
changed as soon as I visited my daughter’s house, the
day after the funeral.
You see, as soon as I walked into her home, I smelled the
pine from her live Christmas tree and it had been more than
23 years since the last live tree I had. My wife and I
have been using three artificial trees we keep in storage,
always decorated. We just cover them with plastic bags.
As a kid, we always had live trees with that smell. One
year, my brothers and I went to the woods and cut one
down for my dad to put up and much to his chagrin, he did,
although it wasn’t the prettiest tree.
The thing was, it smelled so piney and good. That smell
made Christmas for us when I was a child and young adult,
even when there wasn’t much under it.
However, when I got married, my wife started using artificial
trees because they were so convenient and I never thought
about that pine smell but after returning from Houston, I
have had a change of heart.
I took down the artificial trees we already had up on Sunday
and had our grandkids over to help decorate the new live tree
I had purchased and drink eggnog Sunday evening.
What a wonderful evening we had, especially at the end when
the youngest…my three year old Kadence was lifted by me
to put the star on at the top.
That night was so powerful, it almost made me completely
forget about the week before….almost…almost.
And know what it was that did it, aside from my grandkids
helping me decorate? It was the smell of pine on live
Christmas trees.
I had forgotten how wonderful, just that smell was and what
it meant to me.
So, the next morning was trash day and I put all three of my
already-decorated artificial trees out with the other trash
and vowed to myself..I would never, ever have
another artificial Christmas tree. It would have to be live
pine, in at least one room because just that smell and the
remembrance of it,took away so much pain and made me smile.
So Merry Christmas everybody and here’s hoping your’re smelling
pine.
-Sam Putney
