I’ve never in all my life cared so much about Christmas as I do this year. In fact, I’ve mostly held contempt for it. The unbridled consumerism, its white Christian/colonizer, pagan destroying roots, the celebration of gluttony, the waste produced from packaging, and wrappings...but I’ve had a pretty severe run of bad luck since arriving on the Vermont scene. You’d be amazed.

Thus begins my story.

The other day I decided to become obsessed with everything Christmas, like a 1950’s housewife on steroids, longing for the secret promises that the holidays pretend to ensure, disguising the litany of undesirable factors going on in the world right now. I went so far as to wrap presents for the dogs and put them under the tree.

When I made the decision to go for broke and get a Christmas tree, I did so a little late in the game, as there’s been a Christmas tree shortage in Vermont owing to the high demand.

At first I drove to every single potential place in my area recommended by friends and neighbors. Nothing. Emptied out. Then I began pulling into people’s driveways that had small pine trees growing on their land. Like a maniacal Christmas obsessed elf beating down the doors of people that had a few trees growing in their yards, begging them to let me cut one down, even if they already had lights on them. To no avail. It started to feel like the quest for the holy grail, holding onto the thought that this tree was going to change the course of my life. Shift my luck. Change everything for the better. Fix COVID, the housing crises, end patriarchy, and racism, and the billionaire class, and at the very least, bring me a reliable builder. (I’ve been unsuccessfully renovating for some time now) Bring joy to the goddamned world already. A lot of pressure to put on one young tree, I realize this now.

It also needs to be noted that I have a strange and powerful affinity for northern pines. Their beauty and majesty, the way they invite snow to envelope them, the soft white symmetrical sparkles falling onto their outreached limbs like the arms of a child awaiting a mother to lay a warm blanket over them on a cold night, their ability to survive and even thrive in outrageously cold temperatures while maintaining a constant state of green which feeds deer and moose, houses birds, and hosts and shelters a vast array of living things. I love the way a simple walk deep in a forest of snow-covered pines creates intimate rooms around each bend on the trail. Like being in a Royal home. This is the parlor, this is the library, this is the dining room...

Let’s not even discuss the direness of their existence in terms of stabilizing the environment. They filter air particles, remove carbon dioxide, and use that to make oxygen, significantly improving air quality. In fact, I heard on VPR that Vermont drivers create more carbon dioxide than most states because everything is so far away. I have to drive an hour or so to get to a big store like Lowe’s. Then I learned that because Vermont is 80% trees, all the carbon is absorbed. It’s a net carbon sink. A miraculous thing. A true case for reforesting the country in lieu of egoic missions to space and a new approach for the use of property taxes, along with universal healthcare, of course.

After several failed attempts, and about six hours of singularly focused hunting, I almost gave up. I drove up to an itty bitty general store, as there often are in rural Vermont, to inquire within about any possible leads. The young woman at the counter was more than happy to oblige, grabbing my phone from my hands and punching in what seemed like a secret code. It was the address to an old, multi-generational, cut your own Christmas tree farm. I thanked the kind woman and got back into my truck ready to pursue my hunt for the perfect tree.

I follow the dictates of my gps, and there it was, sprawling out if front of me, vast undulating hills dotted with rows of living Christmas trees, and I see the sign “Cut your own Christmas tree” and I excitedly pull in. A tall elderly gentleman in his late 80’s, dressed in bright red wool, and a red and green plaid hat, greeted me warmly as I descended from my truck. I explained how I’ve never done this before, and he was at the ready with how it all worked. All of a sudden I panicked. Did I need to kill a living tree to ameliorate my insatiable hunger for some kind of reprieve from all the sad things? I looked around and calculated how many trees had already been cut, which was significant, in the sea of trees ranging from four inches tall to twenty feet tall, all grown in tidy rows but with a multitude of stumps from previous tree seekers, I asked him how long it takes to grow a six- or seven-foot Christmas tree because that’s what I was aiming for. He said about ten years... Then I asked, “Should I feel guilty about cutting a living thing down for this purpose?”He looked at me in the eye with the tenderness of a loving father or grandfather and told me that for every one tree that gets cut down, several are planted in its place. In that moment all his love for the land and the trees was palpable and moving. He had worked that land for his whole life. It was a part of him. It was understood by the gentleness behind his words, and the depth of his eyes. I told him that I loved him for that, and he smiled as my eyes welled up. He put his hand on my shoulder and gave me the hacksaw to do the deed. He sent me farther away to a more isolated spot telling me that there’s some beautiful trees that way, so I drove out of sight from the road or any people. I arrived at the area, got out and proceeded to walk up and down the rows searching for “the one.” It was getting cold.

I had to look up to see the tree, to try and gauge the actual height. Up and down the rows I traveled, my fingers and toes numbing with every step, and there it was, calling out to me, the most beautiful densely needled aromatic grand fir tree. It stopped me in my tracks. I approached the tree, and after some intense deliberation, I ceremoniously made my first cut, fully feeling the commitment of the act. Two cuts, then three, then I kept cutting until the tree came whooshing down to the ground in a loud thud. I looked at it for a moment, hugged and kissed the remaining stump in gratitude, and realized it was HUGE. I thought “Oh my god, what did I do??” It was entirely too big to pull out of the woods and get into the truck on my own, but somehow, I did it through sheer force of will and desperation. I pulled it with all my might out of the woods and lifted it into the truck bed, noticing that the diameter of the trunk was about 8”. “Whoa,” I thought, “What did I do...” I drove the tree back up to where the man was stationed, and he approached the truck to measure the tree for pricing. He asked how it went, and I said, “I feel like I just hunted and killed my own meat. It felt like a rite of passage.” He laughed heartily. After he was done measuring he told me that the tree was eleven feet tall. ELEVEN FEET TALL. I paid him forty dollars and drove home. Once home I proceeded to pull the tree from the vehicle and drag it into my house by wrapping it in a moving blanket, like a body I was trying to dispose of. Somehow I managed to get it inside and up into the tree stand, and there she stood, the most beautiful tree I’d ever seen. Exhausted and anxious, I paused to reflect on the question;

Has it restored my sense of joy?

Considering it, working for it, living with it, looking at it, arranging, rearranging what hangs from it, having this once-a-year opportunity, this ritual, to focus on aligning and creating something magical. Making the sacrifices for the simple clear purpose of trying to manifest and uphold beauty, a delicate singularly focused mission... I’d say that is pure unadulterated activism. “Beauty is truth, truth is beauty–that is all ye know on earth and all ye need to know.” John Keats.

Elektra Buhalis is an artist living in The North East Kingdom in Greensboro Vermont. She is filling in for Richard Phelps this week.