When the deceitfulness of riches proves unfruitful

My mother had warned me not to expect too much for Christmas that year. Overhearing my parents' conversations, I understood that milk prices were low and that the cash crops had barely paid for thoughts. The low, hesitant tone of my mother's voice also told me she was a little ashamed to tell her child such a thing.

I suppose it's also why we didn't put up the Christmas tree the first week of Decem-ber as our family always had. Whenever my younger brother or I asked about the tree, my mother would quickly look busy and say we just didn't have time that day but maybe we'd put it up on the weekend.

Then, seven days before Christmas as my brother and I watched a television holiday special in the living room, we suddenly realized that both of us were staring at the picture window where the tree always stood.

I decided enough was enough. "Hey, let's go get the Christmas tree," I said to my brother.

His face lit up.

•••

Being 11 years old, I was just young enough to do something so audacious. My brother, being five, didn't yet have enough self-restraint to talk me out of it.

So we crept up the stairs and quietly opened the attic door. Our parents had purchased an artificial tree, which was all the rage. I suppose there was something neat about a tree that always stayed green, left no needles on the carpet and so easily folded into a compact box. It also lacked any scent and didn't appear like any evergreen I was familiar with; I guess some market sudy determined that the Manitoba fir is a maximum number of shoppers' ideal of a Christmas tree.

To a kid, though, even an artificial Christmas tree is preferable to none at all.

So while our mom worked in the kitchen, we slid the tree box down the stairs. I showed my brother how he should match up the colors on the branches' hooked end with the color slot on the tree pole. After that, we fluffed the twigs and needles to give the boughs body.

Scrambling back to the attic, we started looking for the ornaments. Being farmers, my parents had a simplistic idea of what should go on a tree; a string of lights and glass bulbs were good enough. I found the lights tangled in a large ball atop an old armoire, and then my brother said, "Oh, no."

He gazed forlornly at the floor. The box holding the glass bulbs lay upside down.

Kneeling, I turned the box over but knew just as he did that the bulbs probably were shattered. Sometime during the past year, they must had fallen off the pile of boxes. Sure enough, only three of the 18 had survived the crash.

•••

"What're we going to do?" my brother said. "We can't have a tree Christmas tree with only lights."

I glanced away, trying to think of something comforting to say. My eyes settled on the small attic window, the only form breaking the white glare the tip of a distant pine that stood near the cornfield.

And then it came to me.

We tossed on our snowsuits, rubber boots, stocking caps and mittens and went outside. My brother and I collected fallen pinecones in a paper bag. Inside, after mom had discovered our assembled tree, she gave us some brown thread from her sewing basket. The two of us carefully strung the thread around each cone's pith and attached them to the boughs.

We had a Christmas tree of lights, three glass bulbs and several, wonderfully scented pinecones.

•••

That winter, quite a number of dairy farmers, including two of our neighbors, went out of business. My father remained determined to hang on, though, and the next spring milk prices rose. Then a drought hit the West, and my father got a good price for his alfalfa, soybeans and corn.

Still, my parents didn't talk with any glee when a Nebraska cattle rancher paid us twice the going rate for 200 hay bales that November. They knew how close they'd come to folding just a year before.

Our Christmases got better, too; for a few years, our parents lavished gifts upon my brother and I as if to make up for the one bad year.

But that single difficult Christmas taught me a powerful lesson: The cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches does prove unfruitful.

And that was among the greatest gifts I've ever received.

(originally published Dec. 21, 2003)