Christmas trees -- past imperfect
We live in an age that seems to demand Instagram-worthy, themed, color-keyed Christmas trees. However, I'd like to put in a word for the old-fashioned "family" tree. You know the one -- it's had a series of not-quite-right tree skirts over the years, including a hideous piece of red fleece you bought in desperation at the last minute; a faded blown-eggshell Santa Claus that you made in fourth grade; a baseball-bat baby-shower package decoration (they knew you were having a boy); a plastic lizard that your four-year-old insisted on hiding in the branches; and a glass Pluto whose nose was broken off a few years ago in a decorating accident. There's even a tiny ceramic Scrooge that your mother bought you one year as a peace offering after a horrible argument in a now-defunct department store. You have no other Dickens characters on your tree. But you do have five dwarves extant, and no Snow White to be found.
Yeah, that tree.
The lights are soft amber/yellow, only because a few years ago, you decided their warm glow reminded you of candlelight. They don't match anything, except each other.
Maybe it has a few expensive designer ornaments. Maybe your mother gave you a fragile Radko Madonna and child ornament the Christmas you had a baby boy. Maybe that red, green and white Waterford Celtic knot matches absolutely nothing else in your room. Maybe you can still hear your mother-in-law's delight as she handed you a Lenox "Baby's First Christmas" ornament.
Or perhaps your tree wears a few well-crafted handmade items. What about that quilted ball? Molly made that a lifetime ago, long before marriage and babies and mortgages and parents dying. You and Molly have drifted, but would it really be Christmas without reminiscing about when you terrorized the streets of Georgetown, two fresh, sweet undergrads testing their wings? (Okay, maybe you were really testing your capacity for Irish coffee.) What about the hand-embroidered piece from Guatemala that Jay sent 30-some years ago? Jay, too, has drifted, but only in the physical sense. Do you even want to contemplate a lower branch NOT wearing the embroidered ornament Jay sent with love and warmth? I don't.
There's a chance your "tree topper" is a paper wreath, with few dozen green tissue-paper "flowers" surrounding a photo of a young blond boy in his crested school sweater. Oh, sure, it's awkward, and clunky, and it will fall apart some day. But can a flawlessly wrought glass piece replace the look on that boy's face the day he presented it to you at the Christmas assembly? Can glitter and fine artistry supplant all the love and anticipation that little boy put into the special surprise he made for his Mommy?
Maybe your ornament collection includes some mass-market pieces that can't ever be translated into a design statement. How could you explain that, for years, Eileen gave everyone in your group a coffee mug ornament? How can a tightly curated aesthetic explain the hours, months, years of sitting outside at night, talking with those people and standing shoulder to shoulder with them all? How can color-coordinated ribbon that perfectly matches the walls and picks up on that one fine thread in the throw pillows go to your heart the way Eileen's mini-mugs can?
These reminiscences -- all purely hypothetical, I assure you -- bring me to a mild protest. Why should the "main tree" be a work of art, rather than a catalog of your family's lives and hearts? Why should the sentimental stuff be relegated to a subordinate tree in a hidden room, far away from the main activities of the family Christmas? Why can't the perfectly arranged, artsy, gotta-match-the-backsplash trees be in the other rooms, while the kids' artwork, and the grandmothers' lovingly selected gifts, and the bits that remind you of dear old friends get to shine at the heart of the matter?
Speaking for me and mine, I don't care to be on my deathbed someday patting myself on the back because the garland was perfectly color-keyed to the matched set of Shiny Brite (redux) balls that I snagged for a screaming deal at Macy's. What I want to be proud of is building a tree tradition that, over a lifetime, tells the story of a family (warts and all) and its growth. I want the mismatched, imperfect, construction-paper bits and baubles to be just as proud a part of my narrative as the Waterford stars and Lenox snowflakes.
Will you consider joining me?
Yeah, that tree.
The lights are soft amber/yellow, only because a few years ago, you decided their warm glow reminded you of candlelight. They don't match anything, except each other.
Maybe it has a few expensive designer ornaments. Maybe your mother gave you a fragile Radko Madonna and child ornament the Christmas you had a baby boy. Maybe that red, green and white Waterford Celtic knot matches absolutely nothing else in your room. Maybe you can still hear your mother-in-law's delight as she handed you a Lenox "Baby's First Christmas" ornament.
Or perhaps your tree wears a few well-crafted handmade items. What about that quilted ball? Molly made that a lifetime ago, long before marriage and babies and mortgages and parents dying. You and Molly have drifted, but would it really be Christmas without reminiscing about when you terrorized the streets of Georgetown, two fresh, sweet undergrads testing their wings? (Okay, maybe you were really testing your capacity for Irish coffee.) What about the hand-embroidered piece from Guatemala that Jay sent 30-some years ago? Jay, too, has drifted, but only in the physical sense. Do you even want to contemplate a lower branch NOT wearing the embroidered ornament Jay sent with love and warmth? I don't.
There's a chance your "tree topper" is a paper wreath, with few dozen green tissue-paper "flowers" surrounding a photo of a young blond boy in his crested school sweater. Oh, sure, it's awkward, and clunky, and it will fall apart some day. But can a flawlessly wrought glass piece replace the look on that boy's face the day he presented it to you at the Christmas assembly? Can glitter and fine artistry supplant all the love and anticipation that little boy put into the special surprise he made for his Mommy?
Maybe your ornament collection includes some mass-market pieces that can't ever be translated into a design statement. How could you explain that, for years, Eileen gave everyone in your group a coffee mug ornament? How can a tightly curated aesthetic explain the hours, months, years of sitting outside at night, talking with those people and standing shoulder to shoulder with them all? How can color-coordinated ribbon that perfectly matches the walls and picks up on that one fine thread in the throw pillows go to your heart the way Eileen's mini-mugs can?
These reminiscences -- all purely hypothetical, I assure you -- bring me to a mild protest. Why should the "main tree" be a work of art, rather than a catalog of your family's lives and hearts? Why should the sentimental stuff be relegated to a subordinate tree in a hidden room, far away from the main activities of the family Christmas? Why can't the perfectly arranged, artsy, gotta-match-the-backsplash trees be in the other rooms, while the kids' artwork, and the grandmothers' lovingly selected gifts, and the bits that remind you of dear old friends get to shine at the heart of the matter?
Speaking for me and mine, I don't care to be on my deathbed someday patting myself on the back because the garland was perfectly color-keyed to the matched set of Shiny Brite (redux) balls that I snagged for a screaming deal at Macy's. What I want to be proud of is building a tree tradition that, over a lifetime, tells the story of a family (warts and all) and its growth. I want the mismatched, imperfect, construction-paper bits and baubles to be just as proud a part of my narrative as the Waterford stars and Lenox snowflakes.
Will you consider joining me?
posted by jillsifer | December 13, 2017
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