Today we brought our Christmas tree indoors and the house was immediately flooded with that once-a-year scent of fresh fir.
There is no doubt that certain odors can trigger memories long forgotten – or at least not recently recalled. And so, as it does every year, the smell of that freshly-cut tree took me right back to a long-ago childhood when our Christmas tree was the one we found, cut, and brought home ourselves.
Getting the tree was the signal that Christmas was close. And so it was always a big event when, on a Sunday just before Christmas, Dad, all decked out in his galoshes and fedora, and Mom in her Hudson’s Bay coat would drag us all on toboggans, down the road to find the perfect tree.
And we were never disappointed.
