A Living Memory

“Never say never” is the cliché that rings true. Never would I ever have imagined that I would one day buy an artificial Christmas tree. And now I have. The live Norfolk pine in our lightwell that we’ve used the last ten years has grown larger and heavier and is every year harder to haul into our back room. The trees in our local lots are three or four times the price they used to be. My wife happened to be someplace that had some appealing artificial trees that looked almost real—that technology has certainly changed. It felt like a good size and was on sale for 50% cheaper. It came with lights with various settings (like changing from white to colored every 20 seconds) and folded up into a box suitable for storage. So there you have it. “I will never” turned into 

“I have” with barely a whimper of protest. 

 

The moment finally came to decorate it and up came the boxes from the basement— minus the lights. There was the grandparent of all the ornament boxes, both box and ornaments still intact after some 75 years. Out came my LP record of European Carols sung by the Prague Madrigal Singers, the still-working turntable woke up with a reliable spin and those exquisite songs so beautifully arranged and sung filled the air, an aural comfort food that warmed the heart and set the tone for the ritual tree decoration.

 

And then picking up each ornament, one by one and remembering its story. These are the ones from my childhood, this one we bought for 75 cents at Cost Plus as a young, poor, married couple just getting started, that one from an appreciative school family, another from a dear friend no longer with us. The tree became a living poem, a moving memoir of the lives we have lived, not merely decorative or pretty, but a testimony, a three-dimensional chronicle with texture, lighting and glimmer. The story grew ornament by ornament as the songs played on, all the way to the predictable skip in the record halfway through Deck the Halls. That was the signal to declare it “Done!” and then just sit back for a moment and behold its beauty and feel its story. This living (well, not the tree) monument of remembrance, honoring of ancestors, renewal of hope and light and life. 

 

Following yesterday’s thread, a time to celebrate the miraculous— that we are still here and we have lived the life we have and that we hope to renew this ritual at the same time next year. With a much lighter tree to set up.