The Cast-Iron Christmas Tree Stand

The cast-iron Christmas tree stand comes up the cellar stairs in December, and the cold of the cellar comes with it. The metal is cold enough to sting a bare hand, and it gives the cold up slowly to the warmer air of the room. It is a triangle of iron — three flat feet splayed wide, a collar rising where they meet — and it sits level on the floor with the weight of a small anvil.

The stand is carried with one hand, held where the three feet meet, and it is heavier than it appears. The cellar stairs are narrow, and the stand comes up them one step at a time, feet first, the wings of the thumbscrews clearing the wall by the width of a hand. It is set down on the floor in the corner where the tree will stand, and it waits there dark and level while the rest of the room goes about its December. Between one December and the next, the stand sits in the cellar, where the air is still and the temperature does not change much; the first warmth of the room above takes the edge off the iron only slowly.

The collar is a few inches across on the inside, and three thumbscrews stand out from its sides. Each screw ends in a flattened wing that a thumb turns, and each screw travels through the iron toward the center until its point bites into the bark of the trunk. The base of the tree rests in the well at the bottom of the collar. Once the tree is standing and plumb, water is poured into the collar, and the well is kept filled for the weeks the tree is up. In December the well is never dry for long.

The paint is black where it remains, and it is gone from the places a hand, a boot, or a trunk has touched it. The wings of the thumbscrews are gray and smooth. The lip of the collar is bare where bark has scraped past it on the way in and out. The inside of the collar is bare entirely, and a rust ring circles it at the waterline, the color of old bark. Along the bottom edges, the three feet are worn where they have been pushed across cellar concrete and floorboards. In the protected places — between the feet, under the collar, along the seams — the black paint still holds.

A raised line runs down the outside of each foot where the two halves of the mold met, and the line is still sharp while the rest of the iron has gone dull. In the weeks the tree is up, the screws are turned down again after the first day, seating the trunk deeper into the well. The bark of the cut trunk takes the points of the screws and holds them, and the stand does not give. The water is topped up, and the stand holds the tree plumb until the tree comes down.