Around this time of year, seeing a Christmas tree is not necessarily something you'd write home about. Then again, that could depend very much on where your home is, the origins of the tree itself and the memories it might stir up when it comes into view.
These themes of location and the deep symbolic power of a Christmas icon are explored in rich detail in The Woodcutter’s Christmas, a new book by Brad Kessler that also contains a collection of black and white photographs by Dona Ann McAdams.
Vermont Public's Mitch Wertlieb spoke with Kessler and Adams about the book.
This interview was produced for the ear. We highly recommend listening to the audio. We’ve also provided a transcript, which has been edited for length and clarity.
Mitch Wertlieb: The Woodcutter’s Christmas is a short story. Maybe you could call it a novella. You pack a lot into this tale in just about 70 or so pages. I wonder if at first, this was going to be a longer book, maybe even a novel. And because this feels like a story that could be rooted in real-life events, whether there is any kind of nonfiction element to this story.
Brad Kessler: Well, the story was inspired by a series of photographs that Dona Ann had taken back in the '90s of Christmas trees that were thrown out on the streets of New York City days or even hours after the holidays. People would discard their Christmas trees because New York City apartments aren't always that big, so they had to make room for living. Back then there was no recycling program, at least in the '90s, and so they would lie there, sometimes for days or for weeks. And so Dona had this series that was really moving. They spoke for more than what they were. They seemed representative of something larger, and I wrote a story around it. It was always just a response to her photographs, and that became The Woodcutter’s Christmas.
Mitch Wertlieb: What about the pictures themselves, though? Dona Ann, what made you want to stop on the streets of New York City when you saw a tree just sitting there on the side of the street? And what made you want to take those pictures in the first place?
Dona Ann McAdams: Well, you think back to the 1990s and what was going on. We were in the AIDS crisis, and I was losing a tremendous amount of my community to HIV/AIDS. And at the same time, I was working with an organization called Hospital Audiences, and our job as artists was to serve underserved communities, and a lot of those communities included homeless shelters. So I just, one day after Christmas, walking down the street, saw these trees lying there on the side of the road. They remind me of something. They remind me of all my friends who've been cut down in their prime from AIDS, and all these gentlemen and ladies that I've been working with in the shelter system, and I was just obsessed with photographing them.
Mitch Wertlieb: There are two critical locations that anchor this story we've just talked about. One of them is New York City. The other is the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, where the woodcutter is from. He does this annual visit that he makes to New York City each Christmas — he comes to the Big Apple to sell his trees that he's cut in the Northeast Kingdom — how does that resonate with the family there in the story?
Brad Kessler: This man, Vars, is what they would call in Vermont a bachelor farmer. He lives alone, essentially, in Vermont after his mother passes. And he has been cutting these trees with his father his whole life. And then his father died, and then his mother died, and he meets this family because he camps on their their stoop in the East Village. It's where he sets up his trees. To the family, he's just this figure of fascination. You know, he's this kind of a throwback, this woodsman from Vermont, and he's got, you know, this smell of pine and automobile fluid, because he's always fixing his truck out front. He's quiet, he's generous. You know, the kids, they just think it's magical what he does. He transforms their street overnight into this forest in the middle of the city.
Mitch Wertlieb: And, yeah, they look forward to it every year, and then one year he doesn't come. We'll get to that in just a moment. There is some beautiful imagery, not just in the photos provided, but in the book's prose. And Brad, if you could read this passage marked on page 18. It describes the significance of felling trees deep in the woods of the Kingdom. The woodcutter's father says it's not a process of cutting through wood, but of cutting through time, and the woodcutter picks it up from there:
"My memories from those years are of watching trees fall. I saw them during the day and dreamt of them at night, the silence after you stopped the chainsaw, the creak of new cut grain, the little sway at the top of the limbs, then the slow fall and the crack, the whoosh of the wind and the ground shaking crash and always after the puff of air that rose from the place a tree fell. In summer, it was duff or dust, and in winter, snow, but at all times, there was a kind of light that jumped when the tree came down. Woodcutters know about that light. Mother said it was the soul of the tree rising from the earth. She said it was the tree's spirit flying off like an angel. And though I didn't believe her, then I do now."From The Woodcutter's Christmas
Mitch Wertlieb: That really struck me when I read it, and that has a lot to do with the reasons, which I won't give away here, that the woodcutter actually stops coming to New York City to sell his trees. There is an act of kindness early on in the tale that immediately brought to mind for me, another Christmas classic that's very much rooted in Vermont, and that's Willem Lange's Favor Johnson. They are ultimately quite different stories, and listeners don't worry, no dogs are harmed at all in this book. I do wonder, though, Brad, if you see the similarity in the kindness shown to the woodcutter by the city folks that he comes into contact with and the generosity of spirit that is reflected in Willem Lange's book.
Brad Kessler: I grew up in Westchester, and friends had a ski house here. I didn't know anything about skiing, but I went with them. And one weekend senior year, we all had rented a house somewhere near Sugarbush, I think, maybe it was Lincoln, Vermont, and it was mud season. It must have been spring break, and four of us suburban kids came up in our parents' car, which was like a Chevy Impala or something, you know, a big sedan. Of course, we didn't have snow tires.
So here we are, these kids, and we of course were on this back road. We get stuck in the mud. We're in the middle of nowhere. One of us goes up to the local house, the nearest house, which is probably, you know, a quarter mile away, and it was a farmer's house, and the man comes out with his chain and his tractor and just flops down without hesitation into the mud, chains the car and gets us out of there. And we just stood there, amazed that this was something that people did in the 20th century, or that people did at all, which was, you know, to help others, without compensation, without wanting anything, and that he was able to do that. It wasn't like we had to call — there was no way to call AAA. So he just did that. And he was very quiet, and just saw us on our way. And I just remember thinking, God, when I grow up, I want to be that man.
Last winter, I was in my house and there was an ice storm. There was a knock on our door. There was a woman out there who had been badly bruised, and she said her car was stuck. She'd gotten off the road. And so I brought her in and went outside, and sure enough, found her car was like midway on and off the road. And I managed to get it down, like off the road, in a safe place. And when I went back inside, I remembered that story that I had completely forgotten about being a high school kid and seeing that. And then for a moment, I thought, maybe you've become that man.
Mitch Wertlieb: Dona Ann, most of the pictures in this book, as we talked about before, are of these abandoned trees in New York City. There are two others I need to ask about, because they are beautifully haunting. One of the pictures is the interior of what appears to be the woodcutter’s dining room in his old Northeast Kingdom house. At first glance, we're focused on the austere formality of the room itself. No one's in it, but we can see a man outside in the snow. He's walking either towards the house or away from it. Can't really tell. And then right in the center of what appears to be a small window is the silhouette of a head, a figure. It's kind of ghostly. It's kind of mysterious. And I wonder what is going on in this particular photo. What were you trying to evoke with it?
Dona Ann McAdams: Well, you know, what's wonderful about this book, is that all of the photographs that are not in New York City are in Sandgate, Vermont, where we live. And this particular photograph is our neighbor, Jean Eisenhardt, and it's her kitchen. And her reflection is that ghostly silhouette in the window, and that's her partner, Jack, who's walking up the hill through the glass.
Mitch Wertlieb: The other one I want to talk about is it's sort of an angelic figure. It's really hard to tell whether this is a photograph of something real or almost like a painting. What can you tell me about that particular photo?
Dona Ann McAdams: So the tin angel in the story, we thought that maybe we could find one and photograph it and incorporate it into the photographs. And there was a store in Manchester, Vermont that had one. So it's actually a little teeny tin angel. It's actually made out of lead, maybe 3 inches high. It was cold, and we were able to put the angel on the inside of a window that was frosted, and I shot the angel from the outside with a close-up lens, so it's a real close-up detail of this little, teeny angel.
