Once upon a time there was a strong, young white pine that lived out in the big woods.

One day its old mother said, “My child, you have grown into a very handsome tree. It is because of your good looks and great build that you are not long for this world. Pretty soon some schmuck is going to come along and lop you off at the ankles and take you away.”

This made the young tree’s sap run cold, until the mother told it about a thing called “revenge.”

“You will be taken away and sold, along with a lot of other trees, for use as something the humans call a ‘Christmas tree.’ It is a joyous occasion for them. But don’t think that you are helpless. You will be afforded plenty of opportunities during the merrymaking to take out your revenge on the jerks who crippled and kidnapped you. Don’t let those opportunities pass!”
So, when the young white pine got lopped, it went right to work avenging itself.

Actually, it didn’t have much of a chance until the man took it off the truck along with the others. Then the white pine looked just as wilted and lopsided as it could. This peeved the man very much, because he had to wrangle and haggle with the people who came to buy the trees, and he had to hold the white pine at a certain angle so that they couldn’t see how lopsided it really was.

The man was asking $55 for the young white pine, and when people scoffed at such a price, the man said unChristmasy things. This caused a surge of joy through the white pine, and it shed more needles all over the sleeve of a cashmere coat worn by a potential buyer.
A determined young woman stopped in front of the white pine, stared at it, asked its price, and began arguing with the man. He finally whittled his price down to $10, which practically spoiled his Christmas.

The young woman who bought the white pine had two lovely children and one husband who was not so lovely. When the not-so-lovely husband came home from work and spotted the tree on the back porch, he hollered in and asked his wife why the hell she hadn’t gotten a redwood while she was at it. This thrilled every splinter in the Christmas tree’s body.

“So this is revenge,” it sighed, and drooled some resin on the porch.

The husband wanted to put the tree in the garage until Christmas Eve, but the two lovely children howled so long that the father was afraid the neighbors might think he was flailing the kids with the tree, and were arming themselves in preparation for a march on the house. So he told the two lovely children to shut up. Then he swore that he’d put the forest primeval in the house even if he had to chop a hole in the roof.

Which is what he nearly had to do because the Christmas tree refused to go in through the front door, even though the whole Family pulled at it and stepped all over one another.

Then they tried the back door and found that it opened wider and they could get the tree through the door. But it managed to rake everything off the top of the stove, including a pot of spaghetti, knock over an antique lamp in the living room and leave claw marks on the walls before it reached the living room. The young tree rested on its side while the happy Family fought for 45 minutes about where they would put it. That turned out to be nearly in the middle of the room where it would be sure to get in everybody’s way.

It was well rested when they tried to stand it up. It fell on the two lovely children five times, the lovely young wife six times and the unlovely husband 12 times. It also had enough strength left to knock over two more lamps, three pictures and get resin all over the sofa.

The young tree thought this was great fun, but it didn’t know from nothing yet. When the unlovely husband tried to put lights on the branches, the tree smacked him in the face and then twisted and bent and sagged all over the place. This made the husband say such ugly things that the two lovely children had to be sent out of the room.

The little red and green and blue lights developed sympathy for the young white pine, and when the husband plugged them in they blew out all the lights on one side of the house. Then the husband had to go down and grab the wrong thing in the fuse box, which made him say even more ugly things and forced him to drive to the drug store and buy more lights, which cost him a bundle and made his neck glow red.

Between the time that the tree was finally put up and the arrival of Christmas Day, the young tree managed to keep the house in an uproar. One day it would lean one way, and the next day it would lean another. When the lovely young woman decided that the tree had finally settled into its stand, she made the unlovely husband climb up on the ladder to put a silver star at the top of the tree, which promptly fell on him along with the star and the ladder.

On Christmas Day the tree was at its loveliest. But it was just being deceptive. Every time someone reached under its branches to retrieve a present, the tree fell. This made the two lovely children scream in a very unChristmaslike manner, and the unlovely husband drink more eggnog than was good for him.

When the unlovely husband wanted to take down the tree the day after Christmas, however, the two lovely children howled some more and the lovely wife took to calling him Ebenezer, so he had to leave it up for seven more days, which caused the young tree to shudder with delight and drop more needles onto the carpet.

When it finally came time to dispose of the tree, the unlovely husband found that the local sanitary engineers wouldn’t take it. So he had to put it in the trunk of his car, where it proceeded to deposit a pool of resin. After taking it out of his trunk, and feeling his blood pressure rise upon spying the pool of resin, the unlovely husband flung the white pine’s body into the landfill, promising that next Christmas he would buy an artificial tree.

“Mission accomplished,” sighed the white pine, and shed the rest of its needles.

(Editor’s note: This column originally ran in 1983.)