AND A PARTRIDGE IN A SPRUCE TREE

It was a week before Xmas, and I found myself sitting in a make-up room of the old CBC television studios in Toronto.

I'd just convinced the woman who was working on me to put away her eye-liner and simply pat me down with a bit of pancake to take away the shine. And she was doing that, while she discussed with a friend the relative merits of aluminum versus plastic Xmas trees.

Aluminum trees last longer and reflect Xmas lights better, her friend contended. But the make-up lady argued that plastic trees looked more like the real thing, and aluminum branches cut you when you trip and fall into them.

And so the debate went on, until my face was fully dusted and she finally thought to ask me, "What kind of tree do you have?"

"The kind that's still growing and has live birds in it," I said.

She pulled the towel from my neck, gave me an exasperated look and sent me on my way.

But I'd only told the truth.

That Xmas, I'd decided not to cut a tree - even though I was surrounded by 160 acres of likely candidates. The tiny shack I shared with a shaggy Samoyed and two Siamese cats didn't have enough room for a decorated tree; and so, I'd settled for decorating the huge White Spruce just outside my window.

I strung cranberries and popcorn and made chains of coloured paper and draped them around its snow-covered branches. And even if I had no lights (which was just as well, since I had no power to light them), the moon would be illumination enough.

When I was finished decorating it, I sat in my recliner chair and gazed out the window and sipped my eggnog and listened to the snapping of the birch logs in my stove and counted myself luckier than anyone who had to make do with an artificial tree.

And I wondered how many other, smaller trees on my hill housed partridge beneath their lower branches snow-bent to the ground - and if those birds enjoyed sheltering in their trees as much as I enjoyed just staring at mine.

And I remembered another tree from years before, a large spruce on the grounds of the seminary at Mundelein that a group of us had chosen to decorate when we discovered (to our horror) that the tree in our Rec Room was artificial.

Someone pilfered a box of votive candles from the Chapel sacristy and got some tinfoil from the Refectory kitchen to make cups in which to put them. And these, laid on the tree's great branches as high was we could reach, served as our Xmas tree lights.

And in the evening, during that short period in which we had the freedom to wander, we gathered around that tree. And, looking like characters straight out of Dickens in our thick, black great coats (called zamarras), we lit the candles and sang carols and celebrated the true gifts of Nature.

But that night, in my tiny wilderness home, the carols came out of a radio.

The other celebrants had long since curled up and gone to sleep - the cats on the down-filled quilt on the bed and the dog in her favourite spot behind the stove. But I stayed up into the wee hours, staring at my tree and enjoying the tranquility of being the only human being for miles.

And if my tree didn't have a partridge in it at the moment, it might well expect a visit from one on Xmas Day to pick at its decorations and wonder how they got there.

That night, I fell asleep in my chair and woke Xmas morning to find one of the cats sitting atop the now-cool stove, demanding to know when I planned to start it up again.

And whether or not that was the best Xmas I ever had, it certainly was the year I had the best tree - with or without a partridge.