Wreath Season – My Thought for the Day on BBC Radio Ulster

My Thought for Today on BBC Radio Ulster recalls the wreath season of my childhood in Maine.

Click here to listen, or read the full text below.

Wreath Season

I grew up in a village of 900 people in Maine, on the east coast of the United States. 89% of Maine’s land is forested. When I moved to Ireland, I was shocked on my first foray into the countryside: ‘where are all the trees?’, I wondered. Ireland is my home now, but I still miss Maine’s dense expanses of forest.

This time of year, Mainers are mobilizing to harvest one of the fruits of those forests: Christmas wreaths.

Maine is the largest producer of balsam fir Christmas wreaths in the United States. Each year, more than a million Maine wreaths find their way to homes across the country. In my hometown, almost everyone has a handmade balsam fir wreath on their front door, adorned with pinecones, holly berries, and the essential red bow.

When I was growing up, a family at one end of my street had a small wreath-making operation in their barn. It was there that I first attempted to make a wreath, attaching the balsam fir boughs to the sturdy wire ring. Alas, I was not an adept wreathmaker: my creations were rather flat, scrawny and uneven – not for resale.

At the other end of my street is one of the largest wreath factories in the state. My mother worked there when I was a child. One evening, she came home and announced that she had been reprimanded for putting too many balsam boughs on her wreaths. Each wreath produced in this factory weighs in at four pounds – hardly puny. But she declared: ‘I like a full, fat wreath,’ clearly miffed at the instructions to scale back on her creations.

I can sympathize with large wreath factory at the end of my street: it had to standardize its product. But my mother’s wreaths, those with extra boughs, captured more of that full, eternal life of the Christmas season.

(Image from worcesterwreath.com)