Buying the Tree
I picked up my youngest daughter, Eva, from the High School and drove straight over to WalMart to buy our Christmas tree, just like we do each year.
Christmas trees are a big deal in Hawaii and the Season does not officially start until a Matson container ship arrives with the first shipment of trees from the mainland. This is usually the week after Thanksgiving.
For some reason many folks in Hawaii like to buy their tree from the first shipment. These trees, mostly from the Pacific Northwest, were probably cut in early to mid-November, shipped to Seattle, Portland or Oakland by train or by truck, loaded into containers and then loaded onto the ship and then spend 5 days sailing half-way across one of the seven seas to Hawaii. It is amazing that the needles are still on the trees when they arrive. But there they are, green and smelling like Christmas in the Cascades.
After sitting in a house for four weeks, these trees, having already dried out in shipping, begin dropping their needles like the raindrops in a tropical shower.
By the time they are hauled off to the dump or picked up by the Boy Scouts for recycling (they are used for fuel in a county-owned refuse fueled electric power plant) many have already turned into skeletons, like a New England maple in mid-winter.
Eva and I had to drive all the way to Waipahu for a tree this year since the WalMart lot was already closed and the Lutheran Church across the street wasn't selling them either this year.
In any case, we have the tree set up in the living room. Tomorrow I will string up the lights but we will not decorate it until Emily arrives on Thursday, home on Christmas break from her college in Seattle.
The outside lights went up last Saturday and our basket is starting to fill up with Christmas cards. For us the Season did not begin with the arrival of the trees. It will begin when Emily is home and we are all together as a family again... at least for a few weeks.
Christmas trees are a big deal in Hawaii and the Season does not officially start until a Matson container ship arrives with the first shipment of trees from the mainland. This is usually the week after Thanksgiving.
For some reason many folks in Hawaii like to buy their tree from the first shipment. These trees, mostly from the Pacific Northwest, were probably cut in early to mid-November, shipped to Seattle, Portland or Oakland by train or by truck, loaded into containers and then loaded onto the ship and then spend 5 days sailing half-way across one of the seven seas to Hawaii. It is amazing that the needles are still on the trees when they arrive. But there they are, green and smelling like Christmas in the Cascades.
After sitting in a house for four weeks, these trees, having already dried out in shipping, begin dropping their needles like the raindrops in a tropical shower.
By the time they are hauled off to the dump or picked up by the Boy Scouts for recycling (they are used for fuel in a county-owned refuse fueled electric power plant) many have already turned into skeletons, like a New England maple in mid-winter.
Eva and I had to drive all the way to Waipahu for a tree this year since the WalMart lot was already closed and the Lutheran Church across the street wasn't selling them either this year.
In any case, we have the tree set up in the living room. Tomorrow I will string up the lights but we will not decorate it until Emily arrives on Thursday, home on Christmas break from her college in Seattle.
The outside lights went up last Saturday and our basket is starting to fill up with Christmas cards. For us the Season did not begin with the arrival of the trees. It will begin when Emily is home and we are all together as a family again... at least for a few weeks.
posted by Bird of Paradise at 9:47 PM
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