They say as we get older our genes play a greater and greater role in shaping our lives.  Every now and then I’m startled to see my father staring back at me from the mirror.  But right now my genetic tendencies extend back to the 1600s, a time when the Hosfords were good Puritans.

The Puritans were interesting people.  While they held lofty ideals and considered themselves holier than God, Puritans are mostly remembered for not liking much of anything.  Puritans didn’t drink or smoke or surf the Internet.  They saw such things as a waste of time, time that could otherwise be spent criticizing their neighbors for not being as godly as they were.

Puritans especially disliked Christmas and in 1659 actually banned its observance in Boston.  For the next 22 years people could be fined for feasting, not laboring or celebrating in any way.  And while I like feasting and not working as much as any of my non-Puritan ancestors, I do find myself possessed of a growing puritanical dislike of Christmas.

Never is our character as a society more evident than at Christmas.  And while for many years the good in this character enabled me to tolerate the bad, the balance seems to be shifting.  Not to disparage the kind wishes and generous acts that flow more freely this time of year, but do retailers really need to start putting up Christmas displays before Halloween?  Christmas has devolved into a consumer-feeding frenzy with many businesses earning the majority of their revenue during that time of year.  And while, like my industrious Puritan ancestors, I see revenue as a good thing, shopping has eclipsed everything else.

Some people talk about the “War on Christmas,” feeling they are being attacked for trying to retain a religious view of the season.  Yet many of these same people aim their resentment at those who seek to remind us that we live in a religiously diverse society when in fact it is commercialism that is the enemy.  That, after all, was the message Charlie Brown tried to tell us when I was just a little kid.  And while the Christmas spirit once transformed Ebenezer Scrooge from a churlish lout into a man who kept Christmas all year long, the spirit of today has transformed me into a churlish lout.

Yet for all my distaste of rampant materialism and recycled music, I have to confess that there is something special about this time of year.  As the days shorten and grow cold, there is a greater appreciation of not just the warmth of the hearth but the warmth of the heart.  This time of year has been celebrated by people across the northern latitudes since long before Christ’s birth and even the Native Americans who once lived here marked the winter solstice.

The Pawnee brought cedar trees into their earthlodges for the same reason we bring Christmas trees into our homes – to remind us that the death of the year is not the death of light or hope.  And the fact that the Pawnee’s cousins in Kansas may have sacrificed a maiden to mark the solstice is just another reminder that no matter where or when, this time of year has always brought out both the best and the worst in people.

So I guess, as in years past, I’ll try to see the good.  But that sure gets harder each passing year – probably because there are ever more advertisements in the way.

My grandmother Etta had a large extended family.  Her grandfather, who had sailed from London to America at the age of 14, had umpteen children by the time he homesteaded here.  All but one of his sons stayed here to farm and raise their families, so Etta had a lot of relatives.

The family would get together as often as they could, and one hot summer Sunday they gathered at her uncle Ed’s farm near the Beaver Creek above Boone.  Bored with grown up talk, Etta and her cousin Helen wandered down to the creek.  As they approached a grove of cottonwoods they were surprised to hear music.  As they got closer they discovered a man and his three daughters in a tree house built in a large cottonwood.  This tree house was so large it even had a piano in it, and the man and his daughters were playing and singing.

Upon seeing Etta and Helen approach, the man invited them up into the tree where they spent an enchanted afternoon.  This made a big impression on my grandmother – she’d never seen anything like it – and she talked about it for the rest of her life.  In time the tree house with the piano became part of neighborhood lore and is still remembered today.

In the final weeks of her life my grandmother, who was still possessed of her mental faculties, began revealing secrets.  We mostly heard about suitors she’d never told my grandfather about, and the diverse – and sometimes desperate – ways they’d tried to woo her.

But one night she told about the tree house.  Only this time she told the full story, a story we’d never heard before.  As evening fell Etta and her cousin Helen returned to the farmstead where they told everyone about the tree house with the piano only to find that no one believed them.  Many family members said they were just making the story up, but the girls were so insistent that finally a delegation accompanied the girls back to the tree house so they could see for themselves.

Only the tree house wasn’t there.  The girls were reprimanded for wasting everyone’s time and that was that.  But both Etta and Helen knew what they’d experienced was real.  Even many years later they would still tell this story.  Up to, that is, the point where they returned and the tree house was gone.

It’s easy, I know, for anyone who didn’t know my grandmother to believe that she made it up.  But I believe she believed it.

I once shared Etta’s story with author Duane Hutchinson who wrote a number of books about ghosts and other strange phenomena in the Great Plains.  He felt – and I agree – that this tale had so much in common with worldwide folktales about encounters with fairies (who traditionally looked just like everyone else rather than Tinkerbell) that it was quite possible that’s what Etta and Helen had experienced.

This last weekend Lori, the kids and I went out to look for the Fairy Tree.  Though the Beaver has changed course, a half-dozen ancient and gigantic cottonwoods still stand where my grandmother insisted this had happened.  I looked as closely as I could for any sign that a real tree house had once been there but could see nothing.  We’ll never know what really happened, but part of me likes to think that every now and then the fairies really do sing in the tops of the trees, and even though they weren’t home Saturday, I’d like someday to hear them…