The year Dad forgot the saw. The year her sister’s boyfriend showed up in dress shoes. The years with s’mores and hot chocolate around a bonfire.
For Joy Smithers, those are the Christmas gifts that stuck.
“I can’t remember most of what I got as presents for Christmas as a kid, but I remember going out every year to cut a tree with my parents, brother, and sister,” says Smithers, who grew up near the Finger Lakes National Forest in New York.
Some outings were more successful than others. In high school, her sister invited a boyfriend who claimed to be an expert tree cutter. He arrived in leather shoes and a button-down shirt.
“After bravely snowshoeing in his leather shoes for a mile or so, [he] finally admitted that he had never snowshoed before, much less cut down a tree,” Smithers says. “They were broken up by New Year’s.”
During her senior year of college in New Jersey, Smithers took her roommates on a weekend road trip to New Hampshire’s White Mountain National Forest. Neither had cut a Christmas tree before. Smithers introduced them to the full experience: finding a tree, gathering around a bonfire, and returning home with something special for their apartment.
“That was almost 20 years ago and we all agree it is one of our core memories from college,” she says.
Today, Smithers and her husband take their two children onto the Bridger-Teton National Forest each year to find their Christmas tree.
“Their childhoods are so different from mine in many ways, but cutting down a tree hasn’t changed at all,” she says.
Ready to start a tradition of your own? Here’s how to make caring for the forest part of the memory.
