Christmas Dumpster Diving

Now that it's legally Christmas time (December) and I can now listen to Christmas music and pull out the old decorations and decorate the tree, I have been thinking a lot about the things we all do for Christmas. It always seems every year is different. Last year was the first year Alli and I cut a live tree. This year, I portrayed Joseph in the children's Christmas play at our church. The list could go on and on, but the more I think of it, the more one memory always comes to mind. That memory is of the year my father and I dumpster dove on a cold Christmas Eve night.

We had already pulled all of the decorations out of the boxes that we hid every year in the garage and did as much as we could to turn our home in Visalia, California, into a winter wonderland. We put the wreath on the door, hung the countdown calendar on the fridge, and set up the nativity scene in the front room. It was all perfect all except for one thing. We didn't have a tree.

It was no secret that year. We didn't have a lot of money. Dad had told us money was a little tight and that we would get a tree....eventually. We just didn't know when "eventually" was. Did that mean in a few days, or did he mean in a couple of weeks? We waited all month for the moment dad would tell us that we were going to hop in the car and go to the Christmas tree lot to get a tree, but the days passed and we continued to wait. We waited all month. It wasn't until Christmas Eve night that dad told me that we were going to go and get a tree.

"You got some extra money?" I asked.

"Not quite," my father replied. "But we'll be able to get a tree."

How in the world were we going to get a tree without money? I wanted to ask my dad, but I knew he had a plan. He had never let me down before, so why should I think any less of him now? We were going to get a tree. I just didn't have a clue how we were going to do it.

After dinner, we jumped into the car, just he and I, and we started driving. The city was a ghost town. Everyone was inside, snuggling up under the covers, waiting for Christmas day to arrive.

"There's got to be one around here somewhere," my father said as he drove. "We just have to find one." He was a man on a mission, searching the parking lots we passed by like an eagle searches for it's prey. We kept on driving until he finally saw what he was looking for.

We pulled into the parking lot to one of our favorite places to eat. Mearl's Drive-In. The place was ancient. It had been around when my father was in high school and was still up an running, still making their artery clogging burgers, fries, and gigantic ice cream sundays. Although the diner was closed, the huge neon light still buzzed on through the night. "Eat at Mearl's," the sign flashed to me as I looked out the car window.

"This will work," my dad said as he stopped the car. "We can get our tree here."

"Here?" I asked. "There's nothing here. The Christmas tree lot that was here already closed down. How are we supposed to get a tree now?"

We walked all the way to the back of the parking lot and stopped next to the dumpster. He turned and motioned for me to come over to where he was.

My father finally stopped to clue me in on the plan.

"Every year, Christmas tree lots everywhere end up having extra trees that they can't sell. It's usually the scrawny ones or the ones with problems that they can't get rid of. So, they just throw them away on Christmas Eve when they close the lot for the season." He pointed to the dumpster. "Somewhere in this dumpster has got to be a tree that's good enough to put in our house...and you're going to find it."

I pointed to myself. "Me?"

"Yep."

"So you mean I'm going to jump out that dumpster and pick a Christmas tree?"

"Yep."

A smile spread across my face. It was like a game. Find the best Christmas tree in the dumpster.

Seconds later, I was in the dumpster. My dad climbed right in after me. The dumpster was full to the brim with all different sizes of trees. Tiny ones. Scrawny ones. Dead ones. And tons more. We began moving trees to see what we could find. We kept digging. It seemed like all the bad ones were on the top, but we were determined to find something special in that heap of unfortunate trees. Finally, as we neared the bottom of the dumpster, we found it.

We picked it up and threw it out of the dumpster. It was huge. And tall. It would have been a perfect specimen of a tree, had it not had a huge hole towards the base of it's body.

I stared at the hole in the side of the tree. "What are we going to do about that?" I asked, pointing to the hole.

"We'll hide it in the back. That way no one will see it." My dad smiled at me. "When we're done with it, you won't even know it's there.

And with that, we picked up the tree, tied it to our car, and took it home. A couple of hours later, the tree was decorated. We all stood and stared at the tree in satisfaction. It was big, beautiful, and best of all, it was free. You couldn't even tell that it had been pulled out of a dumpster.

To this day, I still sit and think about past Christmas trees. I try to remember some of the other trees that we decorated as a family. Which was the biggest? The best? I try to picture them in my head, but I can't remember any of them. The only tree that I can remember, and the best tree I ever had, was the tree my father and I rescued on Christmas Eve...the dumpster tree.