Our World Tuesday: 'tis the season

Charlie Brown tree
bought when gold one
couldn't be found in
the crowded cellar
last year.

It seems 'tis the season to be decorating in Our World. Canadian Thanksgiving has come and gone. Hallowe'en has come and gone. American Thanksgiving has come and gone. My birthday has come and gone. Shoppers are rushing home with their presents, and people are posting photos of their Christmas trees online.
The other day I told my husband it was too early to put up a tree, and he wondered why.
"Because," I answered, as a wife should.
A day or so later, after he brought my little gold artificial tree up from the cellar (when he was finally putting his Hallowe'en decorations away and wanted to save a trip down the ladder), I told him, "I said it was too early because, when I was young, we didn't put our Christmas trees up a week after my birthday, we put them up a week before Christmas, because we had cut trees. Dad always went out to cut a tree when we were kids."

My little gold tree, found in
the cellar this year.

That's true. The environment was then referred to as "the mountain" or "the forest" when trees were plentiful, and were also free on Crown Land (aka government land). It was a long, long time ago.
We lived in what was then a small town in British Columbia, and everyone's dad went out to cut a tree. Then they cobbled up tree stands from whatever bits of lumber they had available, to keep the tree upright while it stood in a bucket of water (judiciously replenished by the moms) on a bathmat (to save the floor) in the living room. This tree stand contraption was then draped with tin foil, with only a few strategically placed pieces of tape to hold it there but still allow for watering cans.
Gifts were hidden until a day or two before Christmas, because my mother and sister almost always peeked, and our "big" gifts (i.e. skates, toboggans, or bicycles) were put, unwrapped, around the tree while we slept the night before Christmas.
Cut trees, dads knew, would dry out if put up and decorated too soon, and would become fire hazards. People who lived near forests knew about fire hazards. City people, not so much.
I miss the smell of cut trees, and of the live trees I had when I was an adult on the west coast, where trees could be planted outside after Christmas. I miss the smell of trees, but I don't miss the smell of forest fires.

Our little Alberta Spruce in the front yard.
I'm thinking of putting lights on it, if we can find
the outdoor lights, the nearest outdoor power source, and
the long outdoor extension cord I know we have somewhere.

So now my husband (did I mention he's Jewish?) knows why I thought this past weekend was too early for a tree.

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