Cedar, tinsel and memories

This being the morning of the day before the eve of Christmas, I thought it would be timely to mention cedar trees and tinsel.

Cedar trees are available only if you are willing to find one and cut it down.

Warning: Do not do your tree hunting along highways. It's against the law, for starters. And snatching a tree from the roadside somehow misses the spirit of the holiday.

No, I'm talking about the cedar tree that winds up in a farmhouse living room after being carefully selected by a family who, upon hearing that city folks actually buy trees imported from Canada or Michigan or some other exotic place, shake their heads and warn the youngsters to save their money and avoid congested areas, because you never know when there will be another Great Depression, and don't you remember Aunt Della and Uncle Alf and the bread lines?

When December rolled around in my childhood on Killough Valley in the Ozark hills over yonder, there were certain rituals that had to be observed.

First was scouring every page of the catalog wish books until the pages were dog-eared. It didn't hurt to turn down the corners of those really special pages.

Next was the trip to somebody else's farm to get the cedar that would be decorated with lights, fragile red balls, ropes of gold garland and several pounds of shiny tinsel.

Some of you may not even know what tinsel is.

Think of aluminum foil cut into skinny strips, silvery on both sides.

Tinsel, as best I can tell, was supposed to look like icicles hanging from the tree. Tinsel also reflected light, and when your string of Christmas lights -- the big ones with real bulbs that got scorching hot, only had a dozen or so sockets -- you always wanted to stretch the effect as far as you could, and that's exactly what tinsel did.

There were several schools of thought regarding how tinsel was to be hung on a cedar tree. There was the meticulous school that required each strand of tinsel to be individually separated from the rest and carefully draped over a limb. The meticulous school meant that a tree could be fully decorated in under an hour -- plus two or three hours just for putting on the tinsel.

Another school was the carefree method favored by children and impatient adults. Instead of putting tinsel on one strand at a time, you would take several strands -- clumps, if you will -- and toss them onto the tree and hope they would land somewhere harmonious to the other trinkets already attached to the scratchy cedar limbs.

On Killough Valley, much of New Year's Day was spent undecorating the tree, and tinsel was removed so it could be used again the next year. The carefree method of putting tinsel on the tree did not lend itself to carefree salvaging.

By the way, families that save tinsel also save wrapping paper. You see what I mean.

Our Killough Valley farm did not, for some reason, have cedars. We knew lots of people who had an abundance of the evergreens. But you had to be careful to cut only the tree you really wanted. And you know how it goes: You cut the perfect tree and by the time you head for the car you've found a big bare spot and then you see another tree that's really, truly perfect and you're so tempted to swing the ax again and ... .

Few things remind me of my childhood as much as the smell of fresh cedar.

And ribbon candy. Remember ribbon candy?

R. Joe Sullivan is the editor of the Southeast Missourian.