Touched by the Christmas spirit

EACH YEAR when I put up the tree, I am flooded with nostalgia. The memories of previous years swirl around as the tree goes up and the decorations go on.

One recent year the first memory which came to mind was the switch to an artificial tree. That was nearly 20 years ago. It was a bitterly cold day when we went to look at the trees that year. Standing at the Farmer's Market, we reached the conclusion that this whole tree search was crazy. We headed to a discount store and bought our tree there instead.

While this seemed a sensible decision to us at the time, I recall that daughter Molly was horrified. Her response was something like this: A plastic tree? Dad, how could you? My childhood has been ruined.

I didn't anticipate this response, though thinking back I probably should have. After all, Molly was the daughter who at a younger age had not been the least bit surprised when someone left a tree at our door one Christmas. It seemed to her just a part of the magic of Christmas.

That "plastic" tree is long gone, as is its successor. I bought a new artificial tree three years ago, the first one I've had with built-in lights. This is a great innovation, I thought.

Remembering that, I thought putting up the tree would be a snap. But that isn't what happened. When I set up the tree and plugged it in, only half of the lights went on. The tree looked so sad. My first thought: Not even Charlie Brown would take this one. My second thought: Molly just may have been right.

But I forged ahead, getting out the box of ornaments. I looked through them, recalling the acquisition of this one and that one. Here was one made by daughter Shannon; there was one from friends Mike and Melissa.

Then I came across two bought at Dayton's, the old department store in downtown Minneapolis. One was from a “day after Thanksgiving” adventure the last year the store was called Dayton's. The other was from an after-Christmas sale some years ago. I looked at the ornaments and sighed. Not only is Dayton's gone, I thought, but its successor Marshall Fields is gone, too. Now that store is just one more Macy's, a cog in a chain spread across the country. Why don't they just call it McMacy's.

AS I put the ornaments on the tree, I thought of all the other local names which have disappeared from downtown Minneapolis, Donaldson's, Powers and Young Quinlan among them.

The same is true for nearly every city in the US: Armstrong's in Cedar Rapids; Younker's in Iowa City, Capwell's in Oakland, Emporium in San Francisco. The list goes on and on. We have lost so much.

But it's not only retail stores we have lost. Take local brand names like Cream of Wheat. Now it's just one of hundreds of names owned by the food giant Kraft. How about Creamettes macaroni? The pasta brand is now owned by some East Coast company and the historic manufacturing plant has been turned into condos.

By this point, I had worked myself into quite a snit. And I'd just about finished with the ornaments. There were just two more. One was Oscar the Grouch - a fitting one at that moment considering my state of mind. I put it on.

The final ornament was a small tractor, one I have thought of as the littlest Minneapolis Moline. I remembered buying it and thinking: It's not quite the right "prairie gold" color of real MM tractors, but it's close enough.

I found a spot near the top of the tree for the tractor. I hung it on the short branch I had picked.

Then something remarkable happened. The lights on the top half of the tree came on. I was genuinely surprised, startled enough to let out a "wow."

Now, my practical friends would say that I had merely loosened some kink in the branches of this artificial tree. But I'm not listening to them.

AT THAT moment, it seemed to me that the spirit of the holidays had come into the room and lit the rest of the tree. The same spirit touched me, brushing away my glum mood. It was delightful.

I hope the same spirit touches you this holiday season and brightens your new year, too.