By Janice Lindsay
Contributing Writer
When we moved into our house 22 years ago this month, a knee-high balsam grew in the middle of the small, cleared field that was our back yard.
When the tree had grown to four feet tall or so, I decorated its branches for the holidays with bright red balls and tied a velvety red bow on its top.
Within a couple of years, the tree had grown too tall for me to reach the top. An up-and-coming young balsam took the teen-ager’s place. This second balsam was replaced by a third. The third was replaced by a young hemlock in a corner of the field, red balls shining in the sun so that they seemed to be lit from within.
Now the first tree is 35 feet tall, and no little ones grow near the house.
Trees grow and change, but they keep their treeness. The balsam keeps its piney fragrance, the hemlock its laciness of tiny needles.
And so it is with festive holidays – mine happens to be Christmas – always changing yet unchanging.
At Christmas, we sing songs people have enjoyed for generations. Along with “Greensleeves” (what child is this…) the lullaby whose words were written in the 17th century, we sing “White Christmas” from the 1940s and each year we consider adding new ones. Songs change, but the need to celebrate with music does not.
We light candles. Maybe some of them are powered by electricity, but they glow just the same. Methods change, but we long for the light.
We enjoy traditional foods. Mince pies, a favorite of mine, have contributed to Christmas feasts for seven or eight centuries. (Any leftovers are for breakfast on December 26!) But we add our own traditions, too. Our family’s traditional Christmas breakfast is a plate of dinner rolls baked in the shape of a Christmas tree, frosted in green, decorated with nuts and dried fruits. Foods change, but not the impulse to celebrate together over a shared meal.
We bring a tree and other greens into the house. Maybe some of them are artificial. No matter. We need to remind ourselves that the cycles of nature turn and return. The world outside will be green again.
Artwork and figurines remind us of the holiday’s essence. For our first Christmas, Dick and I bought an inexpensive manger scene at a discount department store. The figures were three-dimensional, but cardboard with a shredded cardboard filling, painted to look like wood. We planned to buy a nicer creche when we were more prosperous. But that one collected memories. When our son was two years old, he had a “grab and toss” phase – he was very fast – and one of the wise men bit the dust. Its replacement doesn’t quite match. When my mother wrote a poem imagining a cat in the stable on that first holy night, I added a white ceramic kitten, even less of a match.
We never did buy another creche. We made this one our own. Nearly six decades later, it’s still the first decoration to come out at the beginning of the holiday season.
A strong silken thread weaves through holiday season after season, connecting us with all those who have celebrated before us and all those who will celebrate after us, each generation adding a little something of its own.
Each year, people complain about the commercialization of Christmas, all that buying and frenzy. But you can always hold onto that thread of holiday meaning. Once you’ve grasped it, nobody can take it away.
Contact [email protected]
RELATED CONTENT:
