Smells of Christmas

For some, it’s the smell of pine in the house. For others, it’s the smell of red and white peppermint sticks. Still others believe Christmas smells like cinnamon, eggnog, Honey Baked ham, hot apple cider or the dampness of snow-covered shoes in front of a roaring fire.

When I was growing up, it wasn’t any of those things. Christmas smelled like Old Spice after-shave.

My earliest memories of Christmas living at 110 Flamingo St. weren’t from any commercials seen on our 25-inch black and white television in the living room. They didn’t shout forth from the radio in the green station wagon with the faux wood panels. Christmas for me started with but a whisper.

Early one morning in my seventh year, I was shaken from my sleep. I don’t remember the exact day, but it was sometime after Thanksgiving, and Dad had snuck into our bedroom. He whispered in my ear, “Son, wake up. It’s time to go. You and Mark are getting the tree today.”

His Old Spice after-shave lingered heavily in the air as we quietly fumbled for our clothes, being careful not to wake our two other brothers or our sister. This year it was our turn to cut down the tree.

Shirts, pants, socks, shoes, and coats were somehow magically pulled on as we tried to shake the night’s sleep from our minds. Slipping quietly down the steps, we passed Mom in the kitchen already up baking Christmas cookies.

The scents of melted butter, gooey chocolate drops and gingerbread men tempted us as we sleepily stumbled by the oven. But we were on a mission. The Christmas cookies would have to wait for our return long before our brothers and sister awoke.

Thinking back, I don’t know why Mom called them Christmas cookies. Around our house, her homemade cookies never made it past a couple of days, much less all the way to Christmas. Dad would never admit it, but I think he was the main reason why they disappeared.

I guess I am my father’s son because The Wife’s homemade chocolate cookies have suffered the same fate for the last eight years. And for the last eight years, I’ve been able to blame their mysterious disappearance on The Boy. But now, he’s away at college. I wonder ... this year would The Wife believe that our cats ate all the cookies?

But I digress. With flashlights and a bow saw, Twin Brother Mark, Dad and I were on our way to cut down our first Christmas tree. Our excitement grew to cold fear when we realized where Dad was leading us. He had taken the path that veered around the swamp in our backyard, went up past the fishing lake at the top of the hill, curved past the rope swing tied to the giant oak, and took the fork that led straight to the Haunted Forest. That, of course, was where the best Christmas trees were located.

As we stood on the edge of the forest, the first bright rays of sunlight had started to filter through the tops of the pines. The light strained to illuminate the moss-laden ground below but was held back by the thickness of the canopy. Instead, the paths winding through the forest towards where the Christmas trees grew were cast in an eerie gray darkness.

Dad hesitated for a moment as he cut on his flashlight, the beam cutting easily through the gray like a knife cutting through one of Mom’s gingerbread men. “Follow me,” he bravely said, then plunged into the woods.

The musty odor of decaying things filled the air, but Dad’s Old Spice made breathing in the Haunted Forest bearable. Maybe it was the reason he had put on so much that morning. Or maybe it was so we could find him if we became separated?

We had only walked for 20 minutes before reaching a break in the woods, standing before the largest stand of Christmas trees I had ever seen. It had rained the night before, and with the thick canopy of the forest now behind us, the morning sun hit the raindrops still clinging to the branches of the little trees. In an instant the refracted beams illuminated in a rainbow of light. It was as if the trees were already plugged in.

As we ran among the pines, Dad waited patently until we found just the right one. He held the tree as Mark and I took turns cutting the trunk. With pine sap in our hair and shirts wet with raindrops, the tree finally toppled.

It took us the better part of an hour, but we dragged that tree out of the Haunted Forest, around the lake, past the rope swing, down around the swamp and up to our back door.

There, Mom was waiting on the deck with freshly baked cookies, gingerbread men and glasses of milk. We gobbled the home-baked treats with sap-covered fingers as we looked on with pride at our prize we had somehow managed to drag from deep within the forest.

It wasn’t until many years later that I found out the truth. It seems our secret source for Christmas trees deep in the Haunted Forest was actually the backside of Uncle Tucker’s Christmas tree farm. Dad had paid him the day before as they exchanged gifts.

Every year, Mister Tucker gave Dad the same Christmas gift, something he opened early and used the very next day: a large bottle of Old Spice after-shave.