Faux, Faux, Faux...Merry Christmas!

Let it snow. Let it snow. Let it snow. Or as close as we can fake it in the South.

As the holidays settle like fog, I see my future: choosing a costly (almost) live fir tree with delicious scents and sentiments; decorating it to the pitter patter of falling needles; wrapping it in fiendish light strings that form a Gordian knot that will defy untangling when the lights come off; hauling water so my tree stays “fresh,” then realizing it refuses to drink and sits in a puddle of stagnant water as branch tips turn beige; finally stripping off ornaments with battle-scarred hands; shoving my bedraggled tree out the door; and dragging it bump, bump, bump down the steps and to curbside where it’s picked up for recycling as mulch. Then I collapse into a heap.

Some friends using artificial trees smirk sanctimoniously and say they’ve “gone green” and won’t support deforestation. Others cite allergies to conifers and smugly list reasons why they’re relieved not to deal with the drama. I just can’t do it. I want a fragrant tree grown in soil on a nice little tree farm, since I no longer live in the country where plentiful trees in the woods waited for my papa, my sister and me to choose them as holiday centerpieces. I can’t bear the perfection of artificial trees but fall helplessly in love with those slightly deformed that defy symmetry like childhood Christmas trees that grew in sunshine and rainfall, shaped by nature. Just look at me! I’m an atavistic idiot in the midst of artificial convenience.

In spite of me and my ilk, artificial Christmas stuff is embedded in American holidays though the original artificiality wasn’t an American innovation. We owe the tradition of both freshly cut trees and their artificial clones to Germany, where local markets in the 1550s sold cut fir trees for the holiday. When the tradition was axed in the 1800s due to severe deforestation (caused not by holiday tree cutting but by man’s drive to civilize the wilderness), table-top trees made of dyed green goose and swan feathers wired onto sticks stuck into holes in a larger stick—the “trunk”—solved the arboreal dilemma.

America had plenty of virgin forests to plunder, but when the 1913 Sears catalog offered feathery imports, we wanted them. Artificial trees took root. An earlier American faux tree was erected in 1747 by the German Moravian Church in Bethlehem (ahem), Pennsylvania, but wooden pyramids painted green and candle lit like that one didn’t tickle hearts as feathers did. By the 1920s, imported feather trees were de rigueur, but lo! a homegrown version appeared in 1930. The Addis Brush Company, producer of toilet brushes, had an Epiphany: brush-making equipment could also make twisted wire branches embellished with pig bristles for sturdier, less flammable trees. Soon Americans merrily put their gifts beneath toilet-brushed trees, fa la la. In the fifties and sixties, we went glitzy with a patented silver pine of highly flammable aluminum coated paper lit by a revolving spotlight of changing colors. We’ve progressed (?) to upside down trees bolted to the ceiling and fiber optic trees composed entirely of light. Today’s most popular artificial trees, imported from China, are made of PVC plastic, a non-renewable, not recyclable plastic that’s fire retardant, but not fire resistant. Caveat: older imported PVC trees often contain lead contaminants, which can scatter toxic dust as opposed to elfin dust.

We’re so passionate about artificial holiday trappings that we’ve often thrown caution to the wind. To get the atmosphere just so, particularly in the South with scant resemblance to the North Pole, we need seasonal smoke and mirrors, so to speak, including faux sneaux. The first successful attempt at simulated polar effects was in 1938 when Lord & Taylor’s “Blizzard Window” transported New Yorkers to the Pole as howling winds blared via a sound track onto the street and a hidden hair dryer blew flurries of popcorn “snowflakes” seen through windows frosted with beer and Epsom salts. To achieve icy effects at home, we’ve used fragments of frosted glass, ouch!, spun cotton batting tediously teased to fluffiness, soap powder mixed in boiling water sprinkled with mica to get a snowy sparkle, asbestos snow and the popular can o’ fake snow. Batting is boring, mica sears lungs, asbestos causes mesothelioma, and canned snow, once made of perfumed stearic acid jelly from boiled cow carcasses, is sold as an aerosol labeled “DANGER – EXPLOSIVE,” warning of potential detonation of a butane/propane/ethyl alcohol bomb. Recipes for safe alternatives can be Googled online, but many of us opt for the convenience and thrill of packaged products. “Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow!”

In most of us there’s an unrealistic, wide-eyed child yearning to believe in the magic of Santa, elves, the North Pole workshop and flying reindeer, which we can experience only through artificial simulations, since  we’ve never found the mythical workshop and the “jolly old elf” himself avoids us, probably with good cause. Today’s mall Santas are descendants of the first department store Santa, James Edgar, a Scottish immigrant store owner in Brockton, Massachusetts, who bought an 1862 Thomas Nast drawing of Santa in 1890 and became the real live version, “tall, ample-bodied and bearded” with a jolly laugh and “warm voice.” The Santa we know today is a combo of Clement Clark Moore’s “Night Before Christmas” visitor, Nast’s art, Edgar’s Santa and Coca-Cola advertisements.

I accept that I can’t have real toiling elves, real sparkly snow, real reindeer prancing on the roof and the real Santa. I can, however, have a real tree, even if it (almost) kills me.

Lucile will be exhausting herself in the true spirit of the Christmas holidays at home in Vicksburg, Mississippi, and feels it behooves her to confess she has a wreath made of artificial fruit and greenery.