As I write this article, I am aware that exactly one month from today it will be Christmas Day! As you read, Christmas 2025 is even closer. It doesn’t seem like almost an entire year has passed since last Christmas.
This year, once again, the woman I married decided that she wanted a new Christmas tree. Women are obviously different than men. While I can tell you exactly how many Christmas trees I personally have had in my life, I can’t tell you how many different trees my wife has had since I have known her.
The first Christmas tree I remember was in the late 1960s when I was about four years old. We lived on Academy Street in downtown Maynardville. That tree was real, and it is the only live Christmas tree I remember. In those days, it was not unusual for the entire light set to go out when one bulb blew, and I vaguely seem to remember that happened with that particular tree.
While our family might have gone through several light strings throughout the years, we had the same glass ornaments for many years. I was still using those well into the 1980s, and possibly during part of the 1990s.
When we moved to the Jack Warwick rental house on Old Luttrell Road, a four-and-a-half-foot artificial tree replaced real trees. But I loved that little tree. We used it for a little over a decade. For that tree we had a ten-bulb set of C-7 lights. Blue was my favorite. To make the set more exciting, we had a flasher that plugged into the wall, into which the light set was plugged. The entire set flashed on and off, much like a neon sign. Somewhere along the way we acquired a flashing star to place on top of the tree. It plugged into the ten-bulb set and was an improvement over a single bulb attached to the tree’s highest branch.
I used to sit in my rocking chair for hours, watching those lights flash in rhythm, listening to records, mostly gospel, on my portable RCA phonograph. For many years the only Christmas record we owned was a 45 RPM version of the Chipmunks singing “All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth”. I think, but I’m not sure, the other side had “Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town”. That record with its bright pink label came with the phonograph when it was purchased from Shoffner’s Furniture and Appliances.
Eventually we acquired a long-play 33 1/3 RPM Christmas album. The Chipmunks have been gone for many years, but I still have that first Christmas album, and no Christmas is complete until I have played it at least once. Interestingly enough, it also has a pink label.
In the early 1980s I purchased a six-foot Mr. Christmas tree from Adrian Shoffner’s Highway 33 Discount store. It cost $25, and Adrian sold it to me tax free. That was the tree I decorated and placed upstairs in the freezing cold room I turned into a library after my father’s death. That was the last tree I got to put up in the wonderful old house in which I lived from first grade to freshman year in college.
With a larger tree came the need for more lights. We purchased a set or two of the small light sets that didn’t stop working if one bulb burned out. That was a good thing, for I remember Mother once helping me put up the tree. We were struggling with the lights, and Mother sort of lost her balance. She really looked quite comical as she stomped out several of the lights as she tried to keep from falling. Mother didn’t fall, but several of the lights fell victim to Mother’s feet.
The six-footer followed us in 1984 to the Thacker rental house on Highway 33, then in 1991 to the first home I owned. The taller-than-me Mr. Christmas served my mother and me from my last year of high school through the first several years I was a certified public-school teacher. I faithfully put up that tree every year, using the same decorations, occasionally acquiring a new ornament here and there, many of them gifts from students and colleagues.
Finally I started leaving the lights on the tree when I shoved it into its box for storage for eleven months of the year. Each year, the tree took on a wearier look. Over the years putting up the Christmas tree became a chore. I was never good at decorating a tree, and I have never put up a tree with which I was happy. Somewhere along the way I lost the few remaining unbroken glass ornaments. Eventually I stopped putting up a tree, opting instead for the now antiquated electric plastic candelabras. I used to place orange C-7 lights in them, but in later years preferred clear bulbs. I still put up my candles every year.
So what happened to my old six-foot Mr. Christmas? I gave it to the woman I was to marry, and she used it one year. Her son’s girlfriend put it up the following Christmas. The tree may still be there somewhere, though I haven’t seen it in years.
For more than twenty years I did not put up a tree, save for the mother-of-pearl ceramic tree with plastic red birds that I bought from my dear friend Mrs. Gladys Bolton. I display that tree the entire year in my home library, though I only keep it lit during the Christmas holidays. Very beautiful, but simple, the tree takes one single light bulb.
In the year 2020, I got nostalgic. I once again put up a Christmas tree in my home library. It was a six-footer, but, unlike Mr. Christmas, each individual branch had to be placed in the tree. Though I had grown weary with putting up Mr. Christmas, which was in one piece and inserted into a tri-legged folding stand, I toiled until I was aggravated over this knock-off. Sadly, I pined for the old glass ornaments from my childhood. I placed red bows and red lights on the tree. It still didn’t look like much of a decent decoration job to me, but it had the advantage of being something I hadn’t tried before.
I was so glad when Christmas was over and I could take that tree down! It seemed to be in my way the entire month of December, and the aggravation it caused wasn’t sufficiently offset by the joy of viewing it nightly in all its sparkling glory. I have it neatly stored in my attic, and one day it will again see the light of Christmas Day.
I now leave the decision whether or not to have a Christmas tree to the spouse. This year, she purchased a wonderful, pre-lit tree that comes in three interlocking sections. The tree has different light patterns. With such a tree at my disposal at an earlier age, I might have persevered for a few more years with putting up a tree. While I toted my wife’s tree home, assembled the three sections, and placed it in its stand, my contribution to Christmas decoration is now ended, save for my electric candles in the windows. I’ve even put my one bulb in my ceramic tree! HO HO HO!!!
Some of my greatest joys of Christmas these days is the memories of Christmases past. Even though we know the people we love will not be with us forever, and we do our best to not take them for granted, there’s the feeling that we never cherish them enough. Dearest Reader, Christmas is not about lights, or gifts. On that first Christmas there was only one light, a star, and it guided Wise Men to bring gifts that scholars tell us arrived possibly two years later. Christmas is about The One Gift given to humanity over 2,000 years ago.
I leave you with the following words that were sent to me in an email by a company during a Christmas season past.

True gifts don’t come in boxes. They’re in your smile. They’re in your gestures. They’re in your kind words.

They come from within and are delivered . . . by you just being the person you are.

Gratitude. Compassion. A listening ear. A “caring about others” mindset.
. . . helping those in your communities. It’s a task that not only must fill your heart all year, but especially at Christmas.

. . . relax by the lights on the tree, have a special meal with friends and family, and help make come true the wishes of others
. . . Merry Christmas!

ANSWER TO QUESTION OF THE WEEK # 78
Why didn’t the girl tell the joke about margarine? (ANSWER: She didn’t want to spread it.)

QUESTION OF THE WEEK # 78
What does it take to make an octopus laugh? (See the next “Mincey’s Musings” in historicunioncounty.com for the answer.)