Down in Bayou Country, December used to mark the height of fur-trapping season. Entire families boarded traditional camp boats to spend the winter trapping otter, nutria, mink, and muskrat in the coastal marshes. No commercial Christmas trees graced these cramped living spaces; the families instead relied on Mother Nature for their holiday decor. Abundant in the wetlands of South Louisiana, native possumhaw trees, Ilex decidua, provided a suitable replacement for the traditional holiday evergreens. Trappers cut branches from the possumhaw trees and placed them in a jar of water in the corner of the room or on a table, the bright red berries standing stark against the grey of the weathering cypress-plank walls. On Christmas Eve, the children each placed an empty sock beneath the tree branches and woke Christmas morning to socks bulging with an orange, a red apple, and hard candies. Today, the crimson berries of the wild possumhaw serve as a reminder of simpler times, when the branches of a wild tree provided holiday cheer to hard-working fur trappers.
.jpg)