One More Talk of THE TREE
We are well into the new year. If you are reading this in June, just go with me here. We have Christmas every year after all.
The tree needs to come down and be put away after all the hoopla of Christmas passes. I recently heard a guy on the radio talking and he was going on and on about the new way to put the tree away is to wrap it in plastic wrap, for us regular folks that is Saran Wrap. He stated that his inbox has blown up with people saying to take all those ornaments and lights off and box them all up is just too time consuming. So the “new” tree storage is aimed toward the artificial tree crowds. Apparently, you start at the bottom, wrap the thing up, secure the end of the wrapping with tape somewhere up where the angel is perched, and then put the tree in a bag. Here, without a doubt, size matters. You can stuff a little tree in a big bag, but you can’t stuff a big tree in a little bag! After bagging is complete, you then store it until next year, when-you slice open the bag, plug in the lights and there you go. Christmas has arrived! I personally think NOT!
But. Yes, a pine fresh “but.” Apparently taking time to un decorate and box up the pretty ornaments, garland, bells, beads and all is now considered gauche. Well I am here to spout about the importance of the tree and all the amazing things a family should strive to accomplish with the Christmas tree.
Of course there is Hallmark and their annual ornament displays. There are Christmas shops filled to the brim to buy the perfect ornament when one elicits a memory. Sigh! Even when you are on vacation in the middle of the summer there are shops that will have memory making ornaments for you to buy. Then, if you are anything like me you will misplace, okay you may lose those until the days after Christmas when you start to plan your next summer vacation. Yes, that has happened more than once in this house. But I fell in love with the little puffin ornament in Maine one year. Again, SIGH!
Collecting ornaments from friends, family and even a cool conference you attended or a church revival. There are nearly an innumerable number of people and places and events that become a memory through a Christmas Tree ornament. At the end of the classic Christmas movie, “It’s a Wonderful Life,”
George is holding his daughter, and she rings this little bell saying whenever a bell rings, an angel gets their wings. That year my mother bought this set of little porcelain bells, just like the one in the movie. I still have them and love them all over again when I take out my box of tree memories.
So to tell me to wrap up my tree like it is yesterday's left over fish? Not going to happen. I have to admit; I would put up my tree early in the season then take it down a day after Christmas. The other side of that is, some Christians go with the tradition to not take your Christmas tree down until the 12th night after Christmas. That night is the epiphany in which the Three Kings or Magi arrive in Bethlehem, bringing their gifts for a baby Jesus
.
The trees I have the past few years are nowhere near the giants that sometimes took a chainsaw in the living room to fit, are now smaller and sadly artificial. The ornaments are still the warmth of the season. I have though started to send them out into the world telling the story of them, to live with other families I know. That is how over the years I accumulated some of the bells and glass balls and plastic reindeer ornaments I have put on my trees. That is the real circle of life. To gather, then to distribute. I am in the distribute phase of life. I finally see and feel why when my mom gave her bells to me, she had such a quiet happy face.
Here’s to putting up the tree and taking down the tree and enjoying both ends of Christmas. Now? On to the new year and the hunt for new memory ornaments to bring home, lose them and then get the thrill of finding them again.
Happy New Year---even if you are reading this in July!!
Trina lives in Diamond Valley, north of Eureka Nevada. Contact her at itybytrina@yahoo.com or Trina Machacek HC 62 Box 62101 Eureka, Nevada 89316
