By GregStiner, 2007
It was Christmas Eve 1944, Halifax harbor was full of ships going to war. Dartmouth was covered in a blanket of snow, and the kids were snug in their beds waiting for Xmas morning to open all their presents.
And in the middle of Dartmouth in small ragged single bedroom shack, an old Mi’kmaq woodsman, who kept to himself, had just come in from cutting down a tree for his house. It was a Charlie brown look-a-like tree and he planted it in the corner as there was a dirt floor in his tiny shack. No one knew this man’s names, everyone just called him woody. Woody loved Christmas, the holiday season brought out the best in people in the worst of times but, he had never had a family of his own to enjoy it with. So every year he would give a present to everyone he knew in the area around him and even some strangers as well. Because it was the giving that made him happy, not the receiving of gifts, the smile he put on others faces was his reward.
The next morning while all the kids were opening their presents from Santa, things were quiet at woody's shack. Some neighbors come by to wish him a merry Christmas and invite him to Christmas diner and found he had passed away in his sleep on Christmas eve. woody Was a poor man with no family and no way to pay for a funeral, so the neighbors all decided, to bury him underneath the Xmas tree he had planted the night before.
His shack was taken down but the tree remained and by the next Christmas that weak twig of a tree had become full of life and healthy as ever and grown 5 times what a normal tree would in that time span. And on Christmas Eve all the neighbors come out and gathered around the tree to pay their respects to woody and had found that the tree they had buried woody under could talk. It was Woody's spirit in the tree, it was a Christmas miracle. His spirit would only come back every year around Christmas time to wish everyone a merry Christmas and ask all the little boys and girls what they wanted for Christmas, and then he would tell Santa......he was Santa's representative for Dartmouth.
Eventually after the finishing of the 111 highway, crews had moved into level the grounds where WOODY ONCE LIVED TO MAKE WAY FOR A NEW MEGA MALL. The neighbours of the small community around Banook Lake all stood and made a human chain in front of the workers and they circled Woody the talking Christmas tree. But the big corporations that control these workers didn't care about Woody, or the people, they had dollar signs in their eyes, and ordered the workers to mow the tree down, people and all if they had to.
It was 11:59pm on Christmas Eve, in 1958, and a small snow storm was just approaching the city, most of the trees on the lot had been taken down and the workers had their engines started and were heading down on Woody and the people in front of him. Just then the snow started blowing hard, and the wind picked up, you couldn't see 5 feet in front of you. It lasted for about a minute and then it was gone just as fast as it came, and off in the distance you could hear a very familiar Ho Ho Ho. The machines stopped and the men all got out of their bull dozers and stared in disbelief at the circle of people with no tree in the middle. Woody was gone, like a ghost in the wind. The construction continued and the mall was completed, and there was never any mention of woody the talking Christmas tree again, until in 1973, he showed up inside the mall at the small place he was first planted at Christmas time in 1944. He had been hiding out at the North Pole and was ready to be back as our representative to Santa.
Everyone loved Woody the talking Christmas tree. Kids from all over Halifax, Dartmouth, Bedford and Sackville, would come to see him. They would line up down the hall of the mall just to see him, and businesses inside the mall loved Woody as well, because he brought in so much traffic. And Woody the talking Christmas tree was one of a kind, they have a Santa in every mall, and only our mall has Woody, a tree that can talk and tells you what you’re getting for Christmas, he is like a super hero the eyes of these kids. Yes everyone loved Woody, well not everyone. The owners of the mall, they didn't like Woody at all, they didn't care about the spirit of Christmas, they didn’t care about giving to others, they cared about themselves, and MONEY. they figure, Woody takes up too much space when he comes....maybe he should be paying them rent, they could be renting that space out to someone who sells cheap sunglasses or cases for your cell phone. And sometimes Woody needs some maintenance himself, which will cost them money in order to make everyone else happy. Woody tried to explain that’s its Christmas and it’s the time of year to give and not to receive, but they devised a plan, to destroy the spirit of Woody forever. They will cut him down at night time when he is sleeping and no one is in the mall to stop them, then Woody will be gone forever. They didn’t want to wait for him to disappear on Christmas Eve.
As soon as he comes back they will cut him down. And that's what they did, While Woody was sleeping they chopped him down and threw him in the junk yard to rot for the rest of his days.........yes Woody is gone, but not forgotten, Woody lives on through the spirit of Christmas, the same spirit of Christmas that created him so many years ago, and the same spirit of Christmas he brought to all of us every year
Thanks Woody
Stay tuned for -The legend of Woody part 2 -the revenge or Woody or Woody saves Christmas