We set out early in the morning. A wintry sun grudgingly appeared as we piled into the car. Mom and Dad, siblings and cousins made up our party. The roof-rack was securely in place on which to bring home the quarry: the perfect Christmas tree which we’ll flush out and capture for the living room. We’re well-armed, and carry a camera to film the expedition.

“Have you packed the hot chocolate?” Check.

“First aid kit?” Check.

We drive for miles and come to a vast region of hard ground surrounding a mountainous landform: the mall. We made it!

“Time for hot chocolate yet?”

“No – we have a big climb ahead of us. The Christmas decorations are on the top floor.”

We make a slow ascent by the world-famous escalator-path. At the top we enter the dense and variegated Jungle of Plastic. Twirling balls hang from slippery boughs draped over polystyrene reindeer, and tinsel twines itself around its companion species, the rubberized life-sized Gingerbread House. Colours are garish in Plastic-Forest. Fairy lights twinkle confusingly in the undergrowth, misleading the explorer in search of the best, brightest, most shapely and highly-evolved artificial tree.

“There!” says Dad, pointing. “That one in the distance. Bag it before anyone else does!”

“But wait,” says Mom, “that blue-tinged one’s even better. Let’s get a blue one this year!”

“No-o-o…” wails little sister Cayley, “we always get silver … we have to get silver …”

“Let’s get a really huge one this year!” contributes teen-aged Josh.

Aunt Meg sighs. She slips a little flask from her purse and takes a nip. Every year she says she’s not joining the Family Christmas Tree Hunt, yet every year, here she is.

“It’s not about size, it’s about the shape,” declares Cousin Mike.

“I’ve brought wire cutters to cut it to size,” says Dad. “It’s got to fit under the ceiling, remember.” He grasps the wire cutters like a weapon.

“That one!” says Mom, pointing toward the wall on the far horizon. “Hush, Cayley, it’s only a bit blue-ish, it’s still silvery.”

Dad pounces on it, elbowing other tree-hunters aside (one is scanning the vast decor-scape with binoculars). Dad whips out his wire cutters and snips the top off the tree.

“A bit more!” says Mom. He snips again.

“A bit less,” says Aunt Meg. He glares.

Cayley snatches up the shapely top which Dad had unceremoniously removed. “You hurt it,” she wails, on the verge of tears.

A masked man in army fatigues appears from behind a clump of snowy-white plastic branches. Another pops up from behind the imitation firs, extravagantly tattooed. Staff members! Special Forces. “Can I help you?” asks the first.

“Will this fit on the roof of the car?” Dad asks Mom, ignoring him.

“Oh, no … I forgot the tape measure!”

“Allow me,” says the tattooed staff member, extracting a tape measure from a toolkit hanging from his belt. “It’s almost six feet.”

“Too short!” says Josh.

“Trim the sides, make it shapely,” says Mom.

“I don’t want a short one!” insists Josh.

“I hate all these trees!” cries Cayley.

“I’m going for coffee,” says Aunt Meg. “See you at the Tim’s downstairs.” She sets out alone across the vast decoration-wasteland, a small figure dwindling against a distant foreign horizon.

“Should I go after her?” asks cousin Mike anxiously.

“Cayley, stop whining,” says Mom. “If you’re quiet you can take the baby tree home, the top part that Dad cut off. Would you like that? You can have it in your own room, okay?”

Cayley stopped whining, tentatively. Surreptitiously, Dad snips another length from the tree.

“Mom, Dad’s killing the tree!” cries Josh. “He’s supposed to trim the sides and he took more off the top.”

“Sir, we’d prefer to do that ourselves,” says the staff attendant in a tone of warning.

“Quick, gather up the branch-ends,” whispers Mom to Josh. “I don’t think we were supposed to harvest them.” Josh shoves his hands into his pockets. “Come on! Put them in your backpack. You can hang them on your bedroom wall like trophies.”

Josh considers, and gathers a few bits of plastic.

“Here, take the other end of the body,” says Dad to cousin Mike, lifting the tree, “it weighs a ton. Let’s get through the checkout line and get this quarry home.”

The now-weary band of tree-hunters follows Dad and Mike, hiking along twisting aisles, down the escalator-path and across the car-park wilderness, where they still had the task of securing their prize to the roof of the car.

“At least we don’t have to decorate the thing,” says Mom, admiring the embedded twinkling lights that had only to be plugged in. “I love Christmas, don’t you? It’s so traditional. Now, where’s that cafe Aunt Meg found?”

S. B. Julian
Victoria, BC
www.treewatchvictoria.blogspot.com