It’s early December, and the holidays are upon us. I love this time of year with the many and varied festivities, a kindlier feeling as well as a nip in the air, twinkling lights and tinkling bells, carols and cookies, parties and poinsettias. Most especially, I love going up the mountain to cut down a Christmas tree.

My sisters and I grew up in Los Gatos, on the edge of the Santa Cruz Mountains, and every December our whole family would pile into the old station wagon early on a Saturday morning and drive up a narrow and winding road to the Four Winds Christmas Tree Farm. Hairpin turns did not daunt us! Nor did chill or mud or frost deter us. Bundled in sweaters and jackets and hats and mittens — and armed with our trusty saw — we would tromp through the trees in search of The One.

Now Craig and I enact this annual ritual, driving down from Alameda to the same farm where we have been buying trees since the 1960s. Although there are now quite a few other farms in the area, I remain faithful to our tradition. 

Rules of the hunt

The thing about finding the right Christmas tree is that you have to look — really look. It’s no good setting your sights on the first passable tree you see. No. Many trees must be pondered from various angles, their assets and defects discussed, their height and volume considered.

Then, after this careful review, any contender’s location is triangulated (south of the utility pole and down the hill on the far side of the road…) — so you can return to it, should it prove to be The One. It never does. And such calculations almost never allow you to find that tree again, once you’ve moved on. (And even if you do find it, you’re never really sure it’s the one you were looking at before.) In reality, there’s no going back.

The Christmas tree hunt requires perseverance, determination, and a refusal to compromise. (No Charlie Brown pity trees for us!) It also helps if you like being outside on a crisp December morning, crunching through pine needles, surrounded by trees, and breathing in the resinous tang of evergreen.

At last, having done your due diligence by tramping over the hilltop for the better part of an hour, you suddenly see it: the best tree on the mountain. When you finally find it, there’s no doubt.

From there it’s a simple matter of deciding where to cut, sawing carefully, lugging your prize back to the truck, and loading up. And then driving back down the hill, gloating all the way (ho, ho, ho!).

Christmas with the Bennets

I bought tickets back in August for the Marin Theatre Company’s world premiere of the second in what I hope will be a three-play cycle about the other Bennet sisters (Elizabeth and Jane having been amply explored in Austen’s original — that’s Pride and Prejudice, for the uninitiated). Written by local playwrights Lauren Gunderson and Margot Melcon, the first Christmas at Pemberley helped us to see Miss Mary Bennet with new eyes. She turned out to be her own woman: curious, clever, forthright, and independent. In this year’s offering we gained insight into flighty, pleasure-loving Lydia and her ne’er-do-well husband, George Wickham. Plus, we discovered the downstairs world of Pemberley, since the play was set in the kitchen.

ASIDE: Something I love about these productions at Marin Theatre Company is all the information they provide about the historical, social, and material context of the plays. Exhibits set up in the lobby told me about the development of cloth production (including the invention of the upright “spinning jenny,” which naturally piqued my interest), the typical routines of 19th-century women living in a great house, both upstairs and downstairs, the details of the feminine toilette of that period, and some of the scents one would have encountered on a daily basis. And from a notice in a bathroom stall (!), I discovered that Jane Austen might have been more like silly Lydia than I’d ever imagined. Kudos to MTC for making me wish for the first time ever that the intermission were longer!

But what does all this have to do with Christmas trees, you ask? In the period in which the plays are set (early 1800s), Christmas trees had only recently begun to be adopted in Britain, and they were still uncommon and a bit outlandish. Forward-thinking Mrs. Darcy, however, insists on having a tree cut down in the woods, dragged into the house (through the kitchen and up the stairs), and set up and decorated in the library — occasioning comment in both plays.

ASIDE: I learn from Wikipedia (of course!) that Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, the German wife of George III, introduced a Christmas tree at a children’s party in 1800. However, Christmas trees only became popular in Britain after Queen Victoria married Prince Albert, who brought the tradition from his native Germany. Wealthy Britons soon followed the royal lead, and the practice had become widespread by the early 1840s.

Both Christmas at Pemberley plays are delightful: witty and lively, beautifully produced and well acted. What’s more, they both take place in the same house during the same Christmas holidays — which opens the intriguing possibility of someone staging the upstairs and downstairs shows simultaneously. For fans of Jane Austen, it’s a joy to revisit favorite characters and to feel we now know them just a little bit better.

O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree,
Much pleasure dost thou bring me!
For every year the Christmas tree,
Brings to us all both joy and glee.
O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree,
Much pleasure dost thou bring me!

Connections

• 1848 Christmas tree engraving by Anonymous: http://www.webstermuseum.org/christmas.php, Public Domain
• Four Winds Christmas Tree Farm
• My drawing captioned “Christmas tree hunters returning victorious” is based on a Far Side cartoon by Gary Larson, which is titled “Early vegetarians returning from the kill.” A Google search will show you some images.
• San Francisco Chronicle (11/19/16): Playwriting duo’s holiday solution: Jane Austen
• The New Yorker (October 16, 2017): You’ve Probably Never Heard of America’s Most Popular Playwright, by Daniel Pollack-Pelzner
• Marin Theatre Company: The Wickhams: Christmas at Pemberley
  Both Christmas at Pemberley plays are being produced around the United States. If one is playing in your area, try to see a production!
• Wikipedia: Christmas Tree and O Tannenbaum