The Magic Christmas Tree: Bamfield, 1951

Every year, Daddy, David and Robert walked a mile or more to the woods out by the swamp to cut our Christmas tree. One brother pulled a sled or a wagon to bring back the tree and the other carried the saw and the axe to chop it down. A week before Christmas, 1951, Daddy announced that this year would be different.

“We don’t need to find a tree this year,” he told us. “Din has received a magic Christmas tree seed from China, and he is going to plant it for us.”

Din was one of the Chinese laundrymen at the Cable Station, and from the time I was born, he also worked on his day off as my mother’s helper. After “Mama, Dada” and “rain,” my next word was “Din.”

Daddy invited Din to the house and we clustered around him in the garden while he ceremoniously planted the seed with a few words of Chinese blessing. The following morning, Daddy took me outside to inspect the spot where we planted the magic seed.

“Look, Daddy!” I squealed. “Our tree has started to grow!” A tiny sprout, about six inches tall, peeked above the soil.

The next day it had grown another foot, and the next and the next until by the end of the week we had a magnificent seven-foot tree in our back yard. I updated my classmates daily at show-and-tell.

“We are growing a magic Christmas tree,” I announced. “Din the Chinaman got it from China and he planted it in our back yard.”

“No,” they sneered. “There’s no such thing as a magic tree.”

“Yes there is!” I protested. “It grew six inches the first night and a foot the next!” By the end of the week, my daily reports had a few convinced but most remained skeptical.

The day before Christmas, Daddy announced that the tree was ready. “I think it is time to bring in the tree,” he said. “You help Mummy get the living room ready while the boys and I cut it down.”

Having insured that I wasn’t around to look, he “cut down” the tree and they carried it into the living room. Even though it was the same Douglas fir that we had every year, this one was more beautiful than all the others because it was magic. We decorated it with hand-blown glass ornaments, lights with little paper shades that spun from the heat generated by their bulbs, upright bubble lights, colored tin icicles that sparkled as they twisted back and forth and finally, the fragile tinsel that we draped carefully over each branch, one thin strand at a time, until the tree shimmered with silver.

My brothers say they told me that the tree wasn’t really magic, but I didn’t hear them. I was too enchanted by the story to disbelieve it. They claimed that they had cut not one, but seven trees that year, and that Daddy had gone out every night after I went to bed to replace that day’s tree with a larger one.

Either way, it was magic.

Maureen Buffington