For Christmas last year I went home to visit my family in Ontario, Canada and I specifically requested that they provide a true Canadian Christmas - that is a very cold and white one. They did not disappoint. The temperature never climbed above -20ºC and there was never less than two feet of snow on the ground.
We spent several mornings shovelling and sweeping a fresh fall of snow off the driveway to uncover our cars, and my young children were soon hooked on tobogganing and ice skating. The quintessential Canadian Christmas ritual, however, was the cutting of our Christmas tree. We drove to a farm on a windswept gravel road, where a team of horses was hooked to a large sleigh.
Twelve of us bundled on and were pulled across the snowy fields to the tree plantation, at the edge of which we paused by a roaring fire to warm our extremities. Then we fanned out into the rows of trees in search of the perfect choice, with periodic shouts claiming to have found the ideal shape and size, until an agreement was happily reached and we lay down on the snow and sawed away at the trunk.
The felled tree was dragged back across the snow and loaded on to the sleigh. We were pulled back to the great white barn, where by now our freezing hands and toes were tingling with the cold. Fortunately hot apple cider was on tap to warm ourselves through.
The final task was to tie the tree to the roof of the car, tightly enough that we didn't lose it on the highway. When we arrived triumphantly back at the house, we inevitably discovered that our sense of scale had been awry: we had to saw another foot off the bottom of the tree to get it in the house.
Author: Douglas Schatz
Date: 1 December 2001
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