Bear's Den: "Nutty Christmas Trees"

Umm, the Eccentric Moon – that´s what early December is, and boy… is it ever aptly named sometimes. I mean, folks can go crazy with decorations for the holidays and that goes especially… for Christmas trees, too. They can be bizarre, but for most Indians – in the old days, at least – pines weren´t good for a lot and were basically… just plain old… nutty.

As a family, we´ve always had a live tree that we´ve gone out and cut every year. For our group, this has traditionally been the Saturday following Thanksgiving. The following Sunday, right after church, was a day spent with everyone putting it up and decorating it and all of the other assorted doo-dads – Nativity Scene, angels, garland, door wreath, and even a little Winnie the Poo in Santa clothing… stuck, embarrassingly… as a hanger-on… on one of the antlers of my Pope & Young whitetail deer mount, eh. It´s a good thing that old Bucky´s stuffed, or he´d die from shame – I ain´t kid´n – but… I meander. My point is that this is family ritual and tradition, and, as with most families, it begins with getting the Christmas tree.

The other day, President Bush lit the national Christmas tree in Washington. It´s a tradition that dates back to 1923, but decorated and lighted Christmas trees had been around for quite a spell before that. It actually had its origins in 16th century Germany with a pagan-like background. But, as a way to create unity in the two-legged flocks, the Christmas tree was officially recognized by the Church in 1539, when the erection of a Christmas tree is mentioned in the official record of the Cathedral of Strasbourg. The practice wasn´t really known outside of Germany, but just like everybody tries to copy celebrities today, so did the folks in the olden days. Uh-huh, and the famous, back then, were the royals – kings, queens, dukes, duchesses and the like. So it was, more or less, that 13 year-old Queen Victoria set the stage for the Yule tree when she mentioned, in her diary, decorating two trees with lights and sugar ornaments and placing presents round them on Christmas Eve of 1832. Yep, shazaam! – the Christmas tree was a hot item.

They say that the very first Christmas tree put up in this land was raised by a Hessian (German) soldier in 1777 in Connecticut. Yet, however, whichever and whenever it happened, the tradition spread like wildfire in the colonies. The basic model was a live conifer of most any species, eh. But, man… over the years, they eventually evolved into plastic, and sometimes… really grotesque caricatures of a Christmas tree. I´ll never forget the really ugly and bizarre Christmas trees that some folks had when I was a kid. These things were made out of aluminum and you didn´t have lights on them – no. Instead, you had a little gizmo that sat on the floor and faced the tree and worked like a fan, with a solid tri-colored lens. It rotated around a light bulb and illuminated the tree via projection. Yep, and I´ve always figured that this was dug out of the UFO that crashed at Roswell. It had been in the box that the aliens had stored in their hull and stenciled as ´Christmas decorations´. Anyway, almost everyone had a Christmas tree during the holidays, well... everybody except most American Indians, maybe.

For us Injuns, pines had plenty of uses, but they sure didn´t have anything to do with the inside of a house, eh. They weren´t good building material because the needles and wood caught fire easily when dry. In addition, the sap made an excellent fire-starter… so, it didn´t make a lot of sense to build your wigewa with them, eh, unless you wanted a ´real´ house warming. But the pine had lots of other uses. The boughs made excellent bedding and quick lean-to shelters when traveling – that kind´a thing. But, possibly the very best thing about pines to an Indian… was that the seeds in the cones were great for eating and they provided tons of nutrients. Yeah, so Christmas aside… that´s why I say that to olden day Indians, pines weren´t good for a lot and were basically… just plain old… nutty.