New Brunswick — If you’ve been shopping in stores or online during recent Christmas seasons, you’ve probably noticed a certain decorating trend: the little red truck hauling an evergreen tree, often with a slogan like “Farm Fresh Christmas Trees” in a rustic font.
While experts don’t know how the image became so ubiquitous, they do agree that it’s basically the “live, laugh, love” of Christmastime.
“It’s on everything from seasonal throw pillows to ornaments to rustic milk jugs you put on your porch — the little red truck carting a big Christmas tree,” said self-proclaimed kitsch expert and enthusiast Belinda Byers, whose home is decked out in this new-ish symbol of Christmases past. “I like it — it’s a lot like those ‘live, laugh, love’ signs except it gets packed away in January and we don’t see it again until the following holiday season.”
Byers says her own home is usually littered with an array of signs bearing phrases such as “Gather” and “It’s wine o’clock somewhere” and “Bless this kitchen.”
While those are good most of the year, the red truck with its green tree from some non-existent farm in some non-existent past is what really gets her in the Christmas spirit.
“It just makes me feel nostalgic,” she told our reporter. Nostalgic for what?
“A time when things were simpler — wholesome little families would go to the tree farm on Christmas eve, it would be lightly snowing, and the farmer himself would bring them a tree in his reliable red truck…it’s just heartwarming, don’t you think?”
Our reporter pointed out that most of this truck-and-tree merchandise is manufactured in China, likely by people who don’t even celebrate Christmas.
“Oh, don’t be such a scrooge,” she said, sipping hot chocolate from her “But first…coffee” mug.