I Know What You Did Last Winter

I drove by a discarded Christmas tree today that someone had rudely and deliberately left on the sidewalk of the major road near my neighborhood. It’s not like it was the week after Christmas; it’s a month after the Jesus’ birthday, for Christ's sake. I can overlook it if the perpetrator is a little slow in taking down decorations, but tossing it unceremoniously into the public streets, well, that’s just nasty. What did that Christmas tree ever do to you? I’ll tell you what it did. It gave its life for you, and not for your life, but just for your enjoyment. That, my friends, is what Jesus would do. What Jesus would not do is throw that tree off the back of his pick-up truck like an empty Budweiser can.

Christmas trees are a lot like older women. They look nice in the beginning of the season, all dolled up with sparkly things and smelling fresh, and everyone is happy to see them. You park them in a room in your house, and they stand there, happily waiting for a little attention. They don't ask for much and they have gifts for you, tucked in little hiding places near their skirts, but after you get what you want from them, you forget about them. You don’t remember to turn them on, to look at them, or to appreciate them. Hell, you can’t even be bothered to give them a drink. They are a forgotten breed. And the next thing you know, they are all dried up, brittle, graying, and utterly disposable.

The truth is, Christmas trees deserve a little more respect than to be tossed out a car door like a ten dollar whore. That tree brought you joy. It celebrated at least one holiday with you, possiblly three, which is more than your college girlfriend did. Face it, would it have felt like Christmas without your tree?

Even when the season is over, that tree can still be useful. The Boy Scouts in our area collect them for God knows what. I think they throw them in a lake to make a freshwater reef, which will later trap a drowning victim during the spring rainy season. If you don’t want to go that route, run the tree over to the dump. They will be happy to turn it into mulch for you to take home and sprinkle around your flower beds. If you aren’t feeling that green, you can always shove it in a plastic bag and have your garbage collector haul it to the landfill where it will take centuries to break down. Look at all the options! Most of them are even free! It seems to me at least one of those would have been easier than abandoning it on the side of the road.

South Carolina, as a rule, does not have the cleanest of roadways. Between the deer and possum carcasses, the smashed beer bottles, the mysterious forgotten shoe, endless cigarette butts, and globs of mucus hocked out of windows, the roads are a disgusting collection of redneck detritus that cannot be avoided. In my twenty odd years of living in this state, I have yet to see a single public service vehicle collect road kill, although I have seen plenty of detention center orange jumpsuits allegedly picking up trash bags off the side of the road. So it isn’t unusual for people to toss their crap out of the car around here. But a Christmas tree? That’s bordering on the psychotic, don’t you think?

I wish some kid’s Nerf CSI forensics kit included a way to track the DNA off that dead tree trunk and trace it back to you, tree killer. If I could find your house, I would. You would wake up one morning to a yard full of dead Christmas trees, all lined up outside your garage door like zombies, waiting for you to go to work. You would see them and close that door, maybe move your particle board television stand behind your front door to block access, and spend the rest of the day standing behind the curtains, peeking out the window at the trees that look like they have moved a step or two closer since last you checked. You would stay there all day and night, never eating, until the sound of chainsaws in your own head drive you mad. You would be fine, eventually, with medication and group therapy, until the day after Halloween, when the Christmas carols start up again at Wal-Mart. You can run, but you can’t hide.