You’ve heard of jokes about “well-seasoned” persons’ birthday cakes being a fire hazard.

I tell you now the number of Christmas trees in my life are almost enough to fill Doughton State Park (if it weren’t full already).

When I say “Christmas tree,” I don’t just mean the personal ones from my 64 years, I mean all I’ve ever seen, even those on their way to becoming such, and those left “unchosen.”

As I entered a local Food Lion recently, a rich pine smell exuded from the “for sale” live Christmas trees lined up just outside its entrance. Actually, the only “live” ones were those with intact roots balled up (the kind favored by my brother Joe and sister-in-law Sheila).

Companion “chopped” trees still looked good, but were basically dead. Their aromatic “blood,” (oozing to form solidified, “pre-amber” crystals) spread the smell.

This brought back the scent of my childhood cedar Christmas trees, but they smelled richer, probably due to the berries.

Since those trees came from woods owned by our landlady, Sadie Heilig (“Heilig” being German for “Holy”), it might be said our tree was a “Heiliges Tannenbaum” (Holy Christmas tree).

I also remembered a vial of pine resin in a childhood chemistry set. Sometimes angling it from side to side, its contents simulated a much more viscous, gluey version of the “wave” sometimes sold in science museum gift shops. No matter what season of the year, when the vial was uncorked, the smell of Christmas was “unstopped” too!

In addition to my memories of our family Christmas trees at Rt. 7, Box 147, Old Concord Rd., are the wonderful Chrismon trees of Saint Paul’s Lutheran Church, which are as “sacred” as they are “mine.” The Christmas trees of neighbors back then, Ritchies, Clines, Lyerlys, Bernhardts, Safrits, and Canups “belong to me too.” The big, beautiful trees in Uncle Ross and Aunt Lessie’s living room on Maupin Avenue are “my personal property” as well. Each is part of a “forest” stored within my mind. Upon hearing “Christmas Tree” they return to my mind’s surface, but not all at once, as that would be “overload.” They are rotated and take turns in recollection during each Christmas Season.

Included are random Christmas trees in living rooms and decorated ones in yards, seen from cars while Christmas light “sightseeing.”

Even the “art noveau” Christmas tree representations on shopping bags of chain stores such as Belk count, and are additionally “mine.”

At Appalachian, I saw “bred to decorate” firs in tree farms along U.S. Highway 421. Going home in November, I was sometimes behind a truck with freshly cut bundles for the many Christmas tree lots “down the mountain.” Though undecorated, they were “Bound for Glory” (the Christmas kind, although riding by road, not rail). These trees are “mine” too!

One special Christmas tree was from my daughter Rachel’s first Christmas. I put some of its needles into a cardboard box, sealing with tape and dating it, like a time capsule or Holy Relic. When opened the following Christmas, those needles were as brown as those caught in ornament hooks, sealed up as well. I guess each Christmas tree is its “own thing,” just for that particular Christmas. (Artificial trees, though beautiful, remind me of seasonal furniture, i.e., yard chairs.)

Another special tree I bought at “Snake” Ashby’s Grocery in Leasburg, Caswell County. Don’t let the name fool you; “Snake” referred not to character (he also made good barbecue, a true Saint in my book), but the time he was a Caswell County deputy and shot a snake with his service revolver. It was so big (the tree, not the snake) that after failing in securing it to the top of my Plymouth Acclaim’s roof (and having a load of firewood in the trunk) I put it in the back seat, both ends hanging out opposite rear-passenger windows. Driving, I felt like the Grinch’s weighed-down little dog returning the “Whos” Christmas. My car smelled like pine for a few weeks.

Some have the little pine scent, tree-shaped deodorizer hanging from their rear-view mirror, but I had the real thing in the back seat.

Summing up, that special smell, whether dangling, “pineform” from rear view mirror, test-tubed as “ambery” goo, or in scented “ooze” from seasonal “farm-raised, sustainable products” near Food Lion’s door, always takes me mentally walking to where my time-stored Christmas trees are “enforested.”

But it’s not unique to me; so reflect, then mentally stroll through your own time-accumulated, treasured “Christmas tree forest” too!