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The Christmas trees in the home of Frank and Mary Helen McCall were always of the cedar variety. Each fall my brothers and I would scout the fence rows and forests for the perfect tree. We never found one. We came close a few times, but a perfect cedar always escaped us. (We invariably ended up turning the “bad side� to the corner of the room.) Unlike the Christmas song which goes, “There is a tree in the Grand Hotel, one at the park as well, the sturdy kind that doesn’t mind the snow,� ours were always the kind that struggled to hold up the Christmas lights. And we had bubble lights! The boughs never broke, but they surely did bend. Our Christmas cedars did well to hold up construction paper chains and strings of popcorn held together by sewing thread. And, of course, there were icicles, those delicate, shimmering strands of aluminum which added luster to the bubbling lights.

By today’s standards our lowly Christmas cedar trees were a rather pitiful sight. They would have given Good Ol’ Charlie Brown’s sad little Christmas tree a run for its money.

But what I remember most is the smell of those trees. To come in out of the cold in December and smell the smoke from a fireplace or woodstove mingled with the deep, rich smell of cedar has to be one of life’s greatest little pleasures. Sometimes I like to think that is what heaven will smell like.

And at our house Christmas morning was filled with the smell of apples, oranges and bananas. It’s the only time of the year that fruit came to us by the bag full. It took me a few years to figure out my mother’s strategy behind all that fruit. She would magically transform those apples and oranges and bananas into her famous Christmas fruit salad made delectable by a thick, creamy, yellow sauce rich with lemon juice, pineapple juice, county eggs and sugar. All the fruit, to use my mother’s words, was “cut up by hand� and the sauce had to simmer for two hours. The results were worth every bit of the time and sacrifice.

And who could forget the smell of haystacks (caramel and coconut), coconut-filled bon bons (yellow, pink, white, and dark brown), chocolate-covered vanilla drops and orange slices? I still remember the smell of a Milk Way bar on Christmas morning.

Over the years I have been tempted to bring in a cedar tree and hide it behind the couch just for the smell. But I decided it might dry out and burn the house down. So, in the future, I guess I’ll settled for cleaning out fence rows around Christmas time and sticking my face in a cedar bush where I will let the smell transport me to simple place in time.

Copyright 2025 by Jack McCall