Well, I'm off to buy a Christmas tree today. It's been a while since I've had a tree. For a long time, I'd go to Iowa for a week at Christmas to visit my family. Why buy a tree when you're not even around to enjoy it? Then one year I was in Iowa for Thanksgiving and my mom suggested I buy a fake tree. So I bought a small, pretty, Victorian-ish pre-lit tree. I kept it on my back porch all year until the holidays, when I'd pull it out of storage, plug it in, and presto--instant, no-hassle Christmas tree. I really liked that tree. But when I moved to my new place, it got left behind. You know how it goes -- you're so tired of moving and packing things that those last possessions that won't fit into the car are left for the next owners. "Maybe they need a pre-lit Victorian-ish tree." Plus, my friend Val was helping me move and she's partial to real, live trees. She hates fake trees. So she definitely influenced me to leave the Victorian tree behind. So now I blame her for my lack of tree.
Last year I bought another fake tree on a whim. I saw this place on my way home from work, and they had trees on sale. So I went in and had a had a look. I bought a 7.5 "windswept pine" and brought it home. Once David and I put it up, I hated it. It was too big....to dark green. Just plain ugly. Plus, the branches were so stiff and too close together, so it was hard to decorate. So after Christmas it went into storage and now we're selling it on Craigslist.
So this year I think we're going to try the real thing. I know they're messy. And I feel a little guilty that a live tree is cut down in its prime of life just so we can put pretty things on it and gaze at it for a few weeks. But I think it's time for a real tree. It feels right.
For a few years after my mother died suddenly, on December 23, 2000, I didn't put up a single Christmas decoration. Christmas to me brought back memories of shock, funeral homes, and unspeakable grief. All of our family traditions were turned up-side-down. My mom loved Christmas. She'd usually put up two Christmas trees -- one upstairs, one downstairs. She'd decorate. She'd start shopping in early fall, trying to find all of us the perfect gift. She loved having all of us home for the holidays. But after she was gone we started doing things differently. That first year after her death we all went to Ohio to my sister's house for Christmas. Last year, the first year I was married, David and I stayed in Chicago, went skating, went to Midnight Mass, and just hung out together watching movies. My sister said that now having a different kind of Christmas is a good thing. My dad just tries to make it through. The rest of us are forging new traditions. And we're to the point, 6 years later, that we feel like celebrating the season again. Because it is really about Christ's birth, not our mother's death. And the hope the Christ brings. "It gets darker and darker, And then Jesus is born" writes Wendell Barry.
Maybe buying a real Christmas tree represents hope to me. I heard once that a long time ago, Christmas trees were hung upside down....to form an inverted triangle, representing God, the Holy Spirit, and Christ, who came to earth to bring us hope, life, resurrection. I like that. Maybe I'll hang my tree upside down this year. Just to be different.
1 comment:
Wow, I made it into your journal. I remember the day I told you to leave your tree behind as if it were yesterday. And now you have a real tree...Yea! I still love the real thing, pine needles and all. This year I even have tinsel on my tree. I love the tradition of it all, even if it is a mess to clean up in January. And I never heard about hanging a tree upside down. I love that image actually, and what it represents.
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