The Christmas Tree

                                              The Christmas Tree (Ghosts of Christmas Past)

      "Please, Mum, can we have a Christmas tree?" pleaded Stephen, holding up the battered crêpe-paper streamer and lop-sided gold star he had made at school that day. At least these innocent offerings were more welcome than months of raging bouts tonsillitis recently bought home from school during Steven’s first term, and readily acquired by both this little sisters as well. Kay was hot and harassed and struggling to regain anything any vestige of Christmas spirit. She glanced around the jumbled holiday batch, belonging to her Uncle George, it had already been cluttered and fully furnished, before she squeezed in the entire contents of her previous home. Two bedrooms were in accessible due to duplicate beds, chairs, chest of drawers and spare clothing in cartons, and the living room and kitchen crowded with multiple appliances, lounge and dining furniture and piles of cartons of household goods.
       Where on earth would she put a Christmas tree? Where would she even obtain a tree of any kind? This was Kay's first Christmas alone with the three children in an unfamiliar beach location, with views of scrubby sections and small, silent baches scattered over the hillsides. Uncle George would be bringing both her grandmothers and her father, for a visit on Christmas Day, and she was dreading their disapproval of her rearrangements inside the family holiday home.
      Actually, she hated Christmas. She remembered the solitary, lonely Christmases as a teenager and young adult, after her family broke apart. She longed to be married and have her own children and family celebrations and Christmas time. She shuddered with distressed memories of her first married Christmas in hospital, losing her much-wanted baby, the second Christmas when little Stephen had undergone serious surgery, the third and fourth Christmases, when she was nine months pregnant with each of her daughters, fatigued and fed up with every person she encountered, predicting a Christmas baby on the spot!
      Then she remembered the first Christmas that Stephen was just old enough to hear the Christmas story, he and his younger sister, Catherine were tucked nicely into bed, with a pillowcase at each bed-end, to await Father Christmas and his reindeer on the roof. She felt as if her own new arrival might indeed be born on Christmas Day, as she tried to shuffle quietly into the bedroom and stow the presents into the waiting pillowcases, which apparently had just finished. Kay groped and stumbled in the dark, then heard a small peevish voice say "They are hidden under the bed, and I don't want him coming in my room anyway." Wearily, she got down on her hands and knees and stretched her arm under the bed, in vain. Feeling for all the world, like a large elephant seal, she heaved her swollen body a little closer, grabbed that the pillowcases from the furthest dusty corner, gave a sudden sneeze, and felt something give in her lower back.
      "No, you are not in labour" said the Emergency Department nurse, brightly "We will just give you a shot of morphine for your back pain and you can go home for Christmas!" The next Christmas, Kay was full of optimism, and and thankfully not full of another baby, so the family went to a shopping mall to see all the Christmas decorations and gifts, and see a benign Father Christmas, sit on his knee and tell their Christmas wishes. What did little Catherine do? She went white-faced and rigid with fear, and promptly threw up all over the old gentleman's red and white suit and her own best dress.
       So, here we are, Christmas again, and they want a Christmas tree. Well, I think they are out of luck. Then memories of her own first magical Christmas tree came flooding back. Kay had been born near the end of the Second World War, and her younger brother followed promptly. Their father had left the Air Force, and the reunited young family travelled north in hope of a new job and a new life.
      Kay remembered her mother sobbing and angrily tacking an old grey blanket across the bay window of a stark room, while the two small children sat silently on a mattress on the bare board floor. They were in a transit camp and Kay had already been in trouble that day, after following and intriguing old Maori lady, clad in a black cardigan and headscarf, with strange blue marks on her chin, a walking stick and a flax kete full of watercress and puha she had been gathering from the streambanks. Among the clumps of white arum lilies with tall glossy leaves, loomed Kay’s angry mother, he snatched her away without a word.
       Early that evening, a miracle occurred, Kay’s father came through the door with a pine tree over one shoulder, and a small fox terrier puppy, squirming under the other arm. The tree was propped in a corner of the shabby room, a packet of small birthday candles were fastened to its scented branches, and when the two children, clutching their soft, warm puppy, were put to bed on the floor mattress beneath the tree, the little candles were lit, and the magic glow quietly filled the hearts and minds of everyone. It was the only Christmas tree she could remember.
       And now, twenty five years on, her own children are ready for their Christmas tree. Kay looks desperately out the window, thinking hard, then she sees it. A large macrocarpa tree on the back lawn of a little bach on the opposite hillside. Nobody has been near the place for months, and it is
a very large tree, surely one branch would not be missed. She waits till darkness falls and stealthily approaches, clutching her Uncle George's handsaw. She selects a central branch and quietly saws it through, at least the tree will not look lopsided as a result of her guilty attack.
      The children are estatic next morning, with the fragrant reality of a real Christmas tree to decorate. It has to sit high in the central window, propped in a red bucket, but it is cheerfully covered with home-made decorations and Kay’s plump gingerbread men with current eyes and buttons, in red-wrapped cellophane.
      Christmas morning arrives, and so does a large contingent of cars and visitors to the macrocarpa batch, doors and windows flung open. Kay glances past the Christmas tree in the window and sees with dismay a large, clearly obvious, dead, brown area in the middle of the macrocarpa tree, robbed of its concealing fresh foliage of green.
      People are strolling around, glancing upwards and everywhere around the neighbourhood. She hastily hauls her tree away from its conspicuous window display, then spends the whole holiday in an agony of embarrassment, fearing to be found out, not daring to dump the discarded tree on the outdoor rubbish pile for burning. It sits in the living room, a shrivelled spectre, shedding foliage all summer long, Ah, the joys of Christmas.