I called my blog Christmas Tree Selection Sunday so you, the reader would think this is an event that is comparable to NCAA selection Sunday for the Big Dance.  For us there is no comparison-Christmas Tree selection Sunday is a much bigger event. 

  Throughout my lifetime choosing just the right Christmas tree has been a huge deal, a highlight of the Christmas season. It is almost important as Christmas itself-it doesn’t quite rival Santa’s presence in our chimney, but close.

  The obsessive need to select just the right tree began when I was growing up in Texas. In my family we celebrated the season in the season.  Our Christmas preparations didn’t begin the 5th of July, Halloween or even the day after Thanksgiving. Our roots were in Minnesota.  In Minnesota it snows when it is Christmas time. So I conjecture that the big delay in our preparations had to do with weather confusion. When it’s sunny and 80 degrees it is hard to believe it is Christmas. My parents waited until the very last minute thinking there would be a good snowfall to announce the beginning of the season. Either that or they didn’t want their kids getting revved up about Santa too much in advance. Three kids peeing their pants and stressing about how many days are left to go in the Christmas countdown is crazy making. My mother had very little patience for that type of nonsense.

  To keep our minds on something besides what Santa was going to bring to our treeless chimneyless house, my mother sharpened up her baking skills.  COOKIE TIME!!! Sugar cookies, German peppermint cookies, almond butter cookies, fudge, apricot bread, chocolate chips cookies,you name it she baked it and we ate it. We gobbled through those cookies like locusts through a wheat field.

  Keeping us in line until the real Santa showed up, we played Secret Santa. The idea of course, being to draw the name of a family member and spend the interim leading up to Christmas doing good deeds for the person whose name we drew. With a family of only five we didn’t stay secret long.  My brother and sister had trouble with the concept of secret, often not wanting to Santa for the person they drew. Within 24 hours of the drawing we all knew who was doing what for whom.  

  Believing that it is never too late to repent, my brother uncharacteristically spent the days leading into Christmas behaving like a perfect Angel Boy. Certain that Santa only kept an eye on kids as he was getting ready to pack up the ole sleigh, my brother quit poking my sister to watch her cry, ceased jumping out of dark corners at night to hear me scream, took out the garbage the first time he was asked and actually cleaned his pockets at night of worms, lizards, and spiny caterpillars so my mother didn’t get stung or bitten when she did the wash.

 The big event however during the pre-Christmas build up was the delivery of the Sears Christmas catalogue.  The day that book arrived all normal activity ceased. On that one day of the year we stopped everything we were doing to sit on the couch; three birds on a fence pouring over the toy section, imagining what Santa might bring. We quit fighting, whining, wheedling and sat quiet for an entire evening studying, deciding and listing. I suppose there were other things in that book that weren’t toys but I never saw them.  It’s a shame that there’s no longer a wish book for kids to dream on. I dog eared the pages of that book as did millions of other children I suppose. It fell open of its own accord to our favored pages. The only thing remotely similar is the toy insert by Toys ‘R’ Us stuffed in the Sunday after Thanksgiving paper. Not the same thing at all.

  Day by day we would begin to notice Christmas trees going up in the homes of friends and appearing at the grocery store, drug store and even the liquor store. Back in the day white trees with matching blue balls was the style. Sometimes you saw red balls or silver, but I remember white plastic trees with blue ornaments. I always wanted one of those, I begged for one, but I was reminded by my mother that those trees were FAKE trees and inferior to what we would have. We would have a REAL tree, an authentic tree with real pine needles and pine sap.

  Christmas Eve was the big day, tree day.  On Christmas Eve day, never earlier, we would begin the search for the right tree.  In Texas, where evergreens are scraggly and scarce, we went to the Christmas tree lot, pulling out each tree and sorting them into two categories; definite no’s and possibly yes’s.  It was a Herculean task but once we got the trees divvied out we got to the serious chore of going through the yes pile.  Fights broke out, critiques of each evergreen candidate were offered up and eventually after many eliminations “the tree” was chosen, tied to the top of the Rambler and hauled home. 

  My dad went out to the garage, brought in the boxes of ornaments. My mother put on a pan or Hershey’s cocoa and we began creating our Christmas masterpiece.

 This year, many, many years later my daughters and I will drive the mile and one half to the Christmas tree farm. (After we moved north from Texas when I was in middle school, we began tagging our trees at local Christmas tree farms the day after Thanksgiving and coming back to cut them down on Christmas Eve.) We have continued that tradition, yet letting it evolve-we now put our tree up about two weeks before Christmas. My family and I go through all the trees on the lot, sorting by possible yes’s and definite no’s, long needled or short. I always want a smaller tree, my kids want as big as we can squeeze into our living room. We argue passionately to try and convince each other of the merits of our own personal favorite until all but one of us says, “Fine, whatever, it’s ugly, let’s take it home.”  The next challenge is cramming the tree into the back of a Volkswagen Jetta and then uncramming it, slapping it into the stand and hoping it fits in the house.

  I go out to the garage and bring the boxes of ornaments down from the attic. The ornaments are stored in the same boxes in which they were stored those long ago days in Texas.  It is a time of discovery as we unwrap each ornament and talk about each one; when we obtained it and the circumstances that led to the acquisition. Several are relics of my father’s childhood. I have collected ornaments for my kids over the years which are the seed ornaments for their own trees when they have homes and families. I now understand why my mother didn’t go for the white plastic tree with the matching blue ornaments. She and I differed on many things but this she nailed.

  This weekend is the first weekend in December.  Selection Sunday is coming. It's a big deal, just like basketball.