January 15, 1970

The month was half over, and it was time to establish another tradition: the burning of the Christmas tree. My family had done that almost every year, and it was always a festive evening.

Nate and I walked two floors down and knocked on the door of friendly neighbors in our building. Fred and Alice were a sweet elderly couple who had been kind to us from the day we moved in. I remember Nate shaking hands with the old man the day we met. “So,” he said, “what do you do?”

Alice answered for her husband. “I have no idea what he does now, but he was a bank examiner when I married him.” Then they both laughed. Nate and I found that statement to be a charming commentary on a happy marriage and quoted it to each other often after that, always remembering Fred and Alice.

When we asked if we could borrow a saw, they wanted to know what we were sawing. “Our Christmas tree,” Nate said. “We’re going to burn it in the fireplace tonight.” Fred and Alice’s apartment was the identical layout to ours, but we doubted they’d ever used their fireplace. It looked pretty clean.

“Well,” said the old man, “don’t burn the building down. It would be a disappointment if we had to move.”

They sent us off with a well-used saw and a plateful of yummy brownies topped with powdered sugar – wonderful examples of warm hospitality.

Back upstairs, it was easy to dismantle the tree – two ornaments and one string of lights. The sum total of our Christmas decorations fit nicely into a shoebox. And then it was time to make a big fire.

The previous August, when we had been hunting for a rental apartment, we had narrowed it down to two possibilities: one had a swimming pool, the other a fireplace. We agonized over the choice, but the fireplace won out.

Since even before Nate and I had married, we’d had fun scrounging the neighborhood and local forest preserves for pieces of firewood and kept our stash in the basement storeroom that came with the apartment – a rough-hewn closet 3 feet by 5 feet. Other than a couple of suitcases, we didn’t have much to store, so it was perfect for our collection of wood. And we made cozy fires almost every evening.

Once we  had Fred’s saw, Nate set to work dismembering our brittle tree, then stuffing the fireplace full of branches. When he touched it with a match, however, neither of us were prepared for the size of the flames that roared to life and filled the fireplace with an angry orange blaze top-to-bottom and side-to-side – a situation dangerously close to being out of control.

Nate shouted, “Get a bowl of water!” (We didn’t own a bucket.) Thankfully, with the screen and a couple of fireplace tools, we were able to control things just enough to keep flames from leaping out onto the hardwood floor. Once everything calmed, we sawed the tree into smaller hunks and moved a little slower.

After all, we didn’t want to be the reason our downstairs neighbors had to move!

“A prudent person foresees danger and takes precautions.” (Proverbs 22:3)