‘Oh Christmas Tree’: One family’s holiday fiasco

Every holiday season has its twinkles of drama. For journalist Dan Simmons, his unforgettable moment involves the family Christmas tree. He shares his fiasco with “Wisconsin Life” just before the holidays.

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My wife started us on a tradition that we’ll never break. The Friday after Thanksgiving, we head out to a farm in the Milwaukee exurbs, park in a gravel lot and pay $125 in exchange for a saw and a shopping trip.

We go to the woods and I cut down a tree that my wife approves. Mary is the merriest of Christmas elves, elevating our living room and front yard into a form of dazzling and tasteful holiday art.

Getting just the right tree marks a first step in the curation process. The height must be right, and the branches must be symmetrical, and the needles must pledge not to start dropping until New Years, at earliest. I’m just her sidekick with a saw.

We return from the woods towing a carefully selected balsam, or spruce, or pine. Sometimes we name our new addition: Bruce the Spruce or Fraser Crane, for example. Teenagers dressed in Carhartt jackets and Santa hats load it on top of the family roadster, tie it down and off we go.

In one of the early years, our daughter, who was about 6, seemed to obsess about the tree. About 500 times on the 20-minute ride home, Frankie repeated this line, in a singsong cadence: “Da twee/Is still on/Da woof!” Sometimes, she’d mix it up with a question: “Is da twee still on da woof?” Yes, for the 767th time, da twee is still on da woof.

A year later, things had changed a bit: she had learned to pronounce her Rs and we’d been home with her for the past 10 months due to the global pandemic. Fortunately and unfortunately, she was less concerned about da twee.

We went to two farms before meeting just the right tree. My daughter actually picked it out, and later explained in an essay that it was “the prficked tree, it was tall and chubby.” Much unlike the Griswolds’ experience, ours came without the slightest hint of snow or ice. It may as well have been San Diego: sunny skies and fields of brown grass all around the trees.

Normally we take side roads and back roads home. As we were about to turn the Honda Fit onto Port Washington, the road next to Interstate 43, the thought occurred to me: why not just take the highway? We had only 10 or so miles to go, and some friends were waiting on Frankie for a playdate.

At this point, Mary would like to remind me of her rebuttal: “Are you sure the tree will stay on if we’re going that fast?” Of course it will, I reassured. What could go wrong?

We were maybe 5 feet past the on-ramp, just merged into highway traffic, when the tree appeared in the rearview mirror, shooting backwards off the top of the car at significant velocity, trailing a blizzard of needles.

It landed in the middle lane of southbound Interstate 43. Da twee was not on da woof. It was on da woad. Cars were coming at it, 70 mph.

I pulled our car to the shoulder, dialed 911 and prayed. Things happened in slow mo. We watched on the rearview mirror. One car after the other approached, saw da twee and panicked.

I am an enormous NBA basketball fan and am familiar with a move called the Euro step, popularized by our own Giannis Antetokoumnpo. It involves driving toward the basket at full speed, planting your foot and somehow darting to one side or the other to avoid a defender. It defies physics. I watched an orange Subaru pull off a Giannis-esque Euro step around the tree, swerving right just before impact while going 75 mph.

There was a helplessness to sitting there. Our road hazard was about to mess up a car and possibly multiple humans, badly, and there was nothing we could do — not plant a sign, not get on a loudspeaker to warn drivers, nothing. It was cars against tree, and there was no doubt in my mind who would win — not the drivers. Yet car after car somehow found a way to avoid contact. Until, that is, the 18-wheel semi came trucking at it.

There was no sudden stopping, no Euro stepping around it, not even a brief slowdown. The truck plowed straight into it. Merry freakin’ Christmas. This guy was just doing his job on Black Friday, maybe toward the end of a run, and, what the ever-living hell? Through zero fault of his own, he was pushing pine. The balsam rode that chrome front grill like a snowplow. The truck didn’t slow down. The tree didn’t let go. Sparks were flying. Needles were dancing. This was cinema. But how would it end?

It occurred to me that the driver may not have even realized he had hit a damn twee. Eventually, he did. Maybe a quarter-mile past impact, the big rig pulled over to the shoulder. The driver got out. I expected an angry confrontation. Nope. In a matter of minutes he pulled the tree from under his truck, chucked it in the ditch, climbed back into the cab and kept on trucking.

I called the tree farm. Minutes after I’d explained what happened, we heard the gruff-sounding voice on the other end yelling at the kids in the Santa hats who’d tied down our tree. My daughter, stoic throughout this situation, burst into tears. It hurt her to hear the boys getting reamed. It wasn’t their fault. To see whose fault it was, I only had to take another look in that rearview mirror.

Mary wasn’t interested in rescuing our tree from the ditch. We decided that we would get another tree, as the tree place graciously comped us a new one. I agreed to rent a U-Haul for pickup this time, and drove that orange-accented moving truck of shame into the gravel lot. The guys in Santa hats profusely apologized, and we profusely apologized back. No one was to blame here (except, well, me).

We found a great new tree, named it Treena Turner, and the Carhartt boys simply placed it in the back of the U-Haul. No falling off this time. My daughter summarized it well: “The nest day we got a new tree for free. And then we dockarated it with my cusin Amya.”

Mary and the girls turned Treena into the most dazzling, tasteful version of herself. I hoisted Frankie to top it with the same glittery star we use every year.

It’s another example of how Christmas is always better when it actually happens and the preparations and adventures that led up to it are in the rearview.

There’s also wisdom in a Jewish friend’s reaction: “Ah, the ways of you Gentiles!”

“Wisconsin Life” is a co-production of Wisconsin Public Radio and PBS Wisconsin. The project celebrates what makes the state unique through the diverse stories of its people, places, history and culture.