How many Christmas ornaments can you hang on a spindly cedar that you cut down off the hill behind the house? How many little pieces of a cedar tree will puncture your thighs when you sit down on the couch at any given moment?

These and other Christmas mysteries are currently being pondered at my humble home, a place where the real magic of the season is not lost, or at least not lost completely.

The cedar tree that currently stands, or almost stands, in my living room was once almost 12 feet tall. It grew alone on the side of the hill, with no real help or encouragement from me. In fact, I seldom noticed it was there, tucked away quietly on the side of the hill, partially obscured by a colossal tulip poplar. This time of year, a cedar is much more noticeable than a tulip poplar, but not so for the summer and fall months.

However, the cedar did catch my eye when it was time to put up a Christmas tree this year. I hate to pay for things that grow in the yard without assistance.

So, I opted to cut the tree down with a short axe. I own a chainsaw, mind you. I have gas and oil and the saw, like all my tool collection, is in very good repair.

But there is something about cutting a Christmas tree with an axe. We have always taken the wild tree with the axe, not the chainsaw. The chainsaw makes too much noise and the owner of the tree field often shoots at you. Of course, I am kidding. I can honestly say that I have never stolen anything, with the possible exception of a tomato.

When I was young, my parents took me into a local produce store and I picked up a tomato and took a bite. My mother, embarrassed, started to scold me. However, the owner of the store told her not to fuss at me and asked, "Boy, do you want some salt for that tomato?" I still love tomatoes to this day, right off the vine, with or without salt. That's one thing I always hate about winter time — the tomatoes taste like cardboard.

I am not kidding about the cedar, though. It was a well-shaped tree, as cedars so often are. I have always appreciated the natural conical shape of that tree, which forms without the aid of a shearing knife. I do have an appreciation for things that are naturally beautiful, things that aren't changed by the hand of man.

I also have an appreciation for things that aren't $20 to $50 that I can't afford to spend after buying my immediate family lavish Christmas presents.

Once I cut the tree down and picked it up, careful to use a glove to keep the prickly needles from sticking me, I drug it to the building and went to the house to see how much I needed to cut away.

My ceilings are somewhat low, so I had to take about three feet off the bottom of the tree. The top portion of this particular tree was wispy and thin on one side, but fuller and wilder on the other. I also trimmed the top in an effort to make it less spindly. After carving on the bottom to put it in the stand, I ended up with a tree of less than eight-feet with a reasonably decent shape.

I put the thin side toward the window by twisting it around in its stand until the room had the best vantage point of my natural beauty. Christmas tree twisting is getting to be a lost art in this age of perfect Fraser firs. I can remember my Uncle Fred searching in the woods for hours for the right tree, walking for several miles in the cold and the snow with an axe or a bow saw. The right tree might have large spaces between limbs and be sparse at one point or another, but it was beautiful to us children. With a set of very big colored lights, mix-matched candy and ornaments and handmade decorations and roping, the scene was completed. Presents were usually miniscule, such as a pair of socks or some fruit or candy. This sounds like a story that might have taken place 50 or more years ago, but it actually took place during the ‘70s and ‘80s.

As I have said before, my uncle was a rugged man of few words and one of the most generous people I ever met. He lived most of his life with my grandmother, who died a number of years ago — a woman who was old from the time I first remember her until the time she passed away. I very much miss going to the homes of my two grandmothers for Christmas, when the entire extended family would show up as our elderly matrons worked to prepare huge meals. One grandmother had a wood cook stove and I would sometimes split the small pieces of wood she used to keep the temperature high enough in her oven to bake the meals. See, even then I liked to play with sharp tools.

The other grandmother spent her time baking up enough food for at least 40 people, when only 15 or so usually showed up at a time. Her joy was found in giving what she had to others. I never went there that she didn't try to give me something, no matter if she needed it or not. I suppose that is one of the main differences between their generation and mine, they worked hard to give, while my generation seems more inclined to work hard to receive.

When I feel like I am trapped in a world that just doesn't know which way is up, I can always remember a simpler time when all we worried about was when we could line up in the kitchen for the family meal.

In these days of ever-complication, simpler times are very alluring to my wistful mind. Then again, perhaps time has added an artificial rose-colored glow to my recollections, giving them a special distortion only visible through the mind's eye. No matter, the memories still linger sweetly.

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