Holiday Missives

“Ninety bucks for a Christmas tree in New Mexico?” I said. “You must be joking.”

“Nope.” Mr. Tree salesman replied.

“These trees here are imported from a small village in the far mountainous north, where they are cut by hand using only miniature saws so small that it takes the woodcutters, each of whom passes their secret craft down from father to daughter, over six months of constant sawing just to cut through one tree.

“These trees are then carefully loaded onto a special sleigh that is only used to transport one tree each day to the village, and is then destroyed in a ritual burning attended by each and every one of the village’s townsfolk (woodcutters excepted of course).

“These trees are then inspected for their ability to handle a minimum requisite number of ornaments. Each tree is completely decorated with only the finest hand blown glass ornaments, strings of lights and individually hung strands of tinsel, each of which is specially manufactured for this purpose (and each made in different villages, located, of course, far away over the sea).

“These trees are then de-decorated, wrapped in a special twine for shipping of which the secret of making has now been lost to only the village twine-makers, and loaded on specially built trolleys for their trip down the mountain.

“These trees are then loaded on tractor trailer trucks which are specially painted in festive holiday colors, and shipped direct to Albuquerque.”

“Actually,” Mr. Tree salesman confided leaning so close I could smell the pine tar, “I should really be selling them for one hundred and ten dollars, but as it’s only a week before Christmas, I feel sorry for you.

“Don’t you know that in New Mexico everyone gets the tree over the Thanksgiving Weekend? What are you? Buddhist or something?”

Shaken by the rampant consumerism that seems to control the sale of Christmas trees in northeast Albuquerque, I ran for my car and hightailed it east to Edgewood, New Mexico, where I found a very nice Nobel Fir on sale in a lot…

For $35…

Cut by hand, but sans the hype.