The Tree

Christmas has always been one of my favorite holidays.  I always have problems around this time of the year getting into the Christmas spirit.  Part of it is that everywhere I look, it's a family time.  There are young couples wrapped up in each other, families out with all the generations together shopping or touring light displays.  And simply everywhere, everywhere are the children.  It makes me feel so very alone.

Additionally, there is the pressure that comes with my job.  The end of the semester is an endurance race full of deadlines, papers to be graded, last-minute emergencies, and altered schedules.  It leaves me too exhausted to feel very festive.

I had decided not to get a tree this year because of Stella.  She's still such a puppy.  I have had to put up baby gates to keep her out of parts of the house, and visions of my antique Shiny Brites in little shards kept dancing in my head.

Friends of mine on Facebook suggested several alternatives, including a rosemary tree, and I even went to Lowe's and got one.  It smells lovely, but it just didn't feel like Christmas.  In fact, looking at the tiny tree-shaped rosemary draped in colored lights felt exactly the opposite.

Today after lunch with Mom and Dad, I drove the short distance to Lazy Acres for a real tree.  When I got there, the "sleigh" that takes people around to the various parts of the farm was slowly filling with little kids holding their parents' hands.  The very last seat had already been commandeered by a young couple who, despite the unseasonable heat, were twined together in that way that only the newly-married seem to indulge in.  I had a giant case of the "nopes," but I also didn't feel like walking over the property on foot to find a tree.

We've been getting trees from Lazy Acres since I was about ten.  That's almost thirty years of trees for me from there.  Every year, either my family and I or just I alone have hiked out, inspected different types of trees, waited for that National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation moment of light from above, cut it down ourselves, and dragged it out to the sleigh.  This year, I just couldn't stand the thought of it.  So much of the joy of it had always come from it being a family thing, from the silly jokes we always told every year, from teasing each other over our annual tree-getting behaviors.  Without that, every part of the experience just felt like a chore.

While I was debating whether or not to suck it up and get on the sleigh, I saw the assortment of pre-cut trees they have near the checkout area.  I suppose they've always had them there; I've never really even looked at them, though.  There were some huge ones and some petite examples, too.  Since I had decided to get one small enough to put on a table to keep it out of Stella-range, I decided it couldn't hurt to look at them.  After all, it would keep me off that kid-filled wagon....

There was a perfect one toward the back.  I tore off the tag, paid, and had it tied to the top of my car in under thirty minutes.  It was back at my house, up in its stand, and covered in lights in under a full hour.

While I worked, I listened to my all-time favorite Christmas vinyl, a recording of carols and Christmas songs played on antique music boxes.  I've loved it since I was a child.  It makes me remember my earliest Christmases as a child with the big Sylvania turntable loaded with all our albums - Elvis, the music boxes, those Firestone Christmas compliations.  The music box one is so different and so lovely from all the others.  I always felt like Christmas was really here when I heard it. I played it through twice as I nestled lights into the boughs of the little tree.

So now my tree is up.  It's different than I usually have, elevated as it is.  There are no ornaments on it yet.  I'll hold off on that until I'm sure that Stella's current indifference is her real reaction to it.  She sniffed it twice, looked at me as if to say, "Sure.  If it makes you happy.  Whatever," and walked off.  She has been chewing on various toys ever since.

Despite the differences, just looking over the top of my computer screen at it makes me happier.  I'm glad I did it.  Maybe if I put enough little things together, then some of that magic I used to feel can return.

After Paris

I wonder if this is what it felt like living in the last days before World War I and World War II, this sense of things spinning out of control, this basic disrespect for the value of human life.  Even though we’re in the Centennial of WWI, I can’t help but feel we’re also living in the shadow of the next “war to end all wars.” 

The level of hatred I see displayed on Facebook on a routine basis is horrifying.  While I know there are tons of “trolls” who find some perverse amusement in stirring the hornet’s nest, I am not sure all these people are professing opinions for the shock value.  Everybody is afraid and angry, totally committed to demanding his/her own best even if it means cutting the other guy’s throat.  And then there are the people who actively search for a chance for that cutting to begin….

People online are arguing over whose tragedy is worse, who the cameras should be focused on.  It’s almost like some kind of hellish competition.  All over every social media outlet I use, this sort of faux superiority is pervasive, “Oh, you are posting in support of Paris?  Humph.  Well, I am CLEARLY a more developed and wonderful human than you.  I post about Beirut.”  “Oh, YOU’RE talking about BEIRUT? Racist! The only thing the news should be focused on is Mizzou.”  And it's endless.  The place names change, but the sense of vicious righteousness does not.  Where did this one-upmanship come from?  What do people think it’s going to accomplish?

Then there are those who use these horrible things for their own political grandstanding.  I have unfollowed five people on Facebook in the past two days and am within inches of disabling my account for a while because of all the finger pointing, fear mongering, and out-and-out lies. So few people seem to be trying to do anything about any of what’s happening other than use it as a club to bash their political opponent with.

And I’m the first to admit I don’t have answers.  I just wish people would use their brains and their hearts a little more, all people, and maybe together we could find some workable solution. 

I’m terribly afraid we’re past the point where that’s possible and only violence can follow.