The Twenty-Eight Cent Christmas Tree

by LaVarr B. Webb

It was a cold day. A gray day, gray with the threat of snow, and gray with the threat of tears. There were children in our family, three of them, ages one, twelve, and fourteen. There were two children missing on that cold, gray day. They had died one Easter season some four years before. Scarlet Fever had wracked their bodies and blotched their skin.

But now the memory of that sad season was replaced by what could be a happier one. It was Christmas Eve 1935, a Depression year. My father was without a job, trying to get on WPA (Works Progress Administration). I don't know where he was that night, just that he wasn't home, but I remember my mother trying to create Christmas joy with nothing to work with.

I was fourteen. My older sister was twelve. I don't remember that we were too concerned about receiving Christmas presents, at least I wasn't. My sister probably wanted a doll. She always wanted a doll, a baby doll, a doll like my baby sister had been, with fat, pink cheeks, and chubby hands and arms.

But now, Christmas Eve, my baby sister was thin and listless. I remember my mother telling my father, "My baby isn't getting proper food."

I don't remember much about that Christmas of 1935 other than I wanted a Christmas Tree. I told my mother, "Christmas will not be Christmas if we do not have a Christmas tree."

My sister and I begged for a tree. My mother told us time, and time again, "We have no money and I cannot buy a Christmas Tree."

My sister and I would not be deterred. We took colored paper from catalogs, cut it into strips, curled the strips into circles, and using flour and water paste, pasted one link into another until we had long lengths of highly colored paper chains.

We looked for tin foil from discarded chewing gum wrappers and cigarette packs. Some of the foil we cut into thin strips for icicles. Our neighbor had an English Walnut tree. We took halves of walnut shells, wrapped them with foil, and had beautiful ornaments that would rival anything found in a store.

We popped pop corn and made chains. We found discarded cranberries and made cranberry chains, but we had no Christmas Tree for our lovely ornaments. Finally, as day was fading, and the dark was creeping across the valley, I asked my mother, "See how much money you have. Maybe someone will sell me a tree."

She went to her purse, and handed me twenty-eight cents. She was crying when she said, "That is all I have."

I jumped on my bike, and rode up to Twenty First South Street in Salt Lake City where all the Christmas Tree lots were located. I went from lot to lot, but no one would sell me a tree for twenty-eight cents.

About nine o'clock, up on Twenty First South and State Street, I found a man turning off his lights and shutting down for the day, shutting down for the season. I asked him, "Do you have a tree you will sell for twenty-eight cents?"

His exact words were, "What the heck! I can't sell anymore anyway. Take your pick."

I found one just a little taller than I was, gave him my twenty-eight cents, put the tree across my handle bars, and headed home. As I peddled out of the lot, I heard him cry, "Merry Christmas" -- and it was.