As a little girl, Taylor Swift had a really buggy job on family Christmas tree farm
Oh sure, when Taylor Swift sings “Christmas Tree Farm,” bucolic winters sound all “icy and blue” where “every wish comes true.”
Why would she want to mention bug infestations in a Christmas song?
But bugs are definitely part of Swift’s memories of growing up on a Christmas tree farm in Pennsylvania, which we are reminded of thanks to a flashback from NBC this month.
In a November 2009 interview on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,” the late-night host sounded surprised to hear that Swift really did grow up on the farm. It’s common knowledge among Swifties today.
(Technically? She has said her father, Scott Swift, tended to the farm in his spare time as a stockbroker.)
“Yeah, it’s very festive, isn’t it?” said then-teenage Swift, who was about to host “Saturday Night Live” at the time.
“Yeah you grow these trees and then you cut them down,” Fallon joked.
“Yeah you know but it’s a happy thing,” Swift said. “Cause they’re all, like, you know, it’s in the center of the living room. People are happy and smiling.
“It actually wasn’t my job to cut them down because I was like 5. They put me to work, though.”
And that’s when she told the story of the Christmas praying mantises.
“There are these bugs called praying mantises. They lay eggs and they form pods on the Douglas fir Christmas trees — it’s their favorite tree to infest, bet you didn’t know that,” she told Fallon.
“I would walk around the Christmas trees all day and pick them off and put them in like a little basket, so that people wouldn’t have bugs in their house.”
“’Look at Taylor, honey. Isn’t that cute? She’s picking the praying mantis larvae and putting it in a basket,’” Fallon joked.
“How sweet. What an adorable little hobby for a child,” Swift joked back.
Bringing bugs into your house on a live Christmas tree can be a Grinch-like nightmare, which is why exterminators post videos and photos of people finding creepy-crawlies like tiny black aphids in their Tannenbaums.
Aphids and spiders are two of the most common pests found on fresh-cut trees. Being inside a warm house can cause eggs to hatch, leading to an infestation.
The Swift family moved from the farm to Nashville when she was almost 13, “because that’s where country music is,” she told Fallon.
Ten years after that conversation with Fallon, she turned her childhood memories into the single, “Christmas Tree Farm,” released in December 2019.
“In my heart is a Christmas tree farm,” she sings.
Swift’s plans for Christmas Day this year are not known, but we do know that her boyfriend, Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, will be in her home state of Pennsylvania.
The Chiefs play the Pittsburgh Steelers at noon Wednesday.
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