The Life Cycle of Christmas, - yes, yes, there is “Christmas Past”, “Christmas Present” and “Christmas Yet to Come”. But that’s someone else’s story.
Nowadays, Christmas has a long gestation period. I’ve never really calculated the time. I’m sure that the commercial community has elongated that process by advertising and putting Christmas wares on the shelves right after the 4th of July. This year, one large chain put Christmas Merchandise in before the Halloween Merchandise - a few days before the 4th! I recalled my mother’s disdain when those money hungry people began moving Christmas merchandise into place before Thanksgiving dinner was digested.
When I was at home, the youngest of 4 children, Christmas had a very short shelf life and so, a very short gestation. Sometime after Thanksgiving, my parents would begin making the upper shelves in their closet very hard to access. As a child, I’d pull out my savings and begin to count it, recount it and allocate it for the big shopping trip on Tuesday before Christmas. I asked for odd jobs, stepped up my pop bottle collecting, and watched the sofa, bathroom and walkways for stray dimes and pennies. I’d try to plan what I could buy for each person. Christmas was in the womb.
Christmas proper lasted about a week in our home. Of course, the lights and tree got to stay until New Years Day. But there was none of this after the fact celebration or gift exchange within the family which allowed for taking advantage of the sales. No, it had to be done on Christmas: in our home, Christmas Eve to be exact. I still have an aversion to Christmas shopping after Christmas, even though the array of family parties has been known to last until New Years, and even though I’ve decided Jesus really doesn’t mind.
In our home, the Saturday that fell before pre-Christmas Tuesday was set aside for our decorating party. Many people did their best to obtain a time-table, which my mother offered and then faithfully ignored, so they could be at our house for the lighting ceremony and the ensuing concert.
My dad procured a tree. I went with him a few times. On a few occasions we all went on Friday night in the dark, flashlights in hand looking for a tree he’d possibly already noticed during one of our frequent, close trips into the mountains. Mom had an opinion, dad had an opinion, children had no taste, no discernment and therefore no viable opinion when it came to Christmas trees. It always seemed, in the end, to be the best tree in existence: a sturdy little spruce, about 7 or 8 ft tall with well placed, but fairly thin branches to show off all the ornaments and lights. Now, it’s probably illegal to just head into the forest and cut a tree, but it wasn’t back then.
That first swing of an axe brought a giddy excitement. It was as the cry of an expectant mother; the labor had begun. Our eyes sparkled as the tree made its way to and into our house. A large galvanized bucket and a dozen rocks stabilized the little bit of wonder. Then just the right amount of sand was added to keep it moist and sturdy. On Saturday evening, after the Holiday Tea and samples of baked goodies for the upcoming culinary season, after the taffy pull, and fudge making, mom cleared the spot in front of the large picture window and the tree was set in place. A large white sheet was draped around the bucket and flowed out onto the floor to hold the coming presents. Carefully, a small opening was preserved so the sand could be tested for moistness but the cat couldn’t dig.
The men disappeared to tend to the manly chore of putting up the outside lights while the children and women decorated the tree. It was like a right of passage for a boy to help with the lights. I never understood that since the tree had lights as well, but it was important to the men. If I ventured into the cold Colorado night during that ceremony, I would be shooed back into the house to decorate the tree. I cannot speak about the lighting ritual, but the tree ritual I memorized well.
Mom took all the bulbs out and packed them into little boxes each year, so the first chore was to get a strand of lights to work and then test and fill the rest of the strands. Those were the small lights: about a half inch around and an inch and a half long. They were hot enough to melt Antarctica! Once the lights were in place and adjusted and readjusted so they wouldn’t lie on the needles, mom would put the kids to stringing popcorn while the ladies placed delicate glass ornaments on the branches with little wire clasps. They’d laugh and talk and dream and tell stories of where this and that came from. My mom had seen a tree with all matching decoration one year and raved about how pretty it was and how much it would cost and what a waste that would be for a couple of weeks use once a year. Funny that I remember that, but it seemed like such a silly idea to me. I loved the sparkling old glass ornaments shedding their silver on the inside.
When the ornaments were in place and had been adjusted enough times that the other women began to wander off to see if there were any samplings left to be had, my mom would come to get our popcorn ropes. After more evaluations and adjusting, it would be time for the tinsel, or “icicles” as we called them, to be scattered over the tree. Mom would demonstrate and give each child a handful of the shimmering strings. The icicles were a real pain after about 5 strands and I would begin throwing clumps at the top of the tree. Mom would scold and pick and sort the tinsel strands, pulling them off the lights where they would begin to melt fairly quickly. We had the gaudiest star that had ever been designed for a Christmas tree. It provided great ambient lighting to the living room and was the last thing to go into place. That done, along with a final adjustment of lights and tinsel, the tree was proclaimed finished. It was a wonder to behold. I’d gaze at it until my eyes watered and then run outside to gaze at it through the window in the company of the bigger lights that framed the outside of the house. This act was repeated until I was sternly ordered to stay in the house. It was an accepted fact that decorating the outside took precisely as long as decorating the tree.
As the in/out game was winding down, the instruments began to be tuned: the off-on key whine of my brother-in-law’s violin, the thunk and twang of several guitars, the scale sliding of my dad’s harmonica, the delicate touching of piano chords. All these welcomed the milling group to gather for first, Christmas carols, then folk songs and dances, and finally sweet harmonized hymns. As a young child I would drag out my doll bed and doll and let it pretend to be the baby Jesus. As I got older and began to participate in the music more, there was always at least one little girl in the family that took that responsibility on, lest we forget what it was all about! As a small child, I usually ended up on the white sheet beneath the warm lights, drifting off to the sweet sound of hymns and awakening in my cozy bed the next morning. By the time I reached preadolescence, I would help bundle the sleeping children into blankets or quilts for their ride home to be tucked into cold, clean sheets and a good night of sweet dreams.
Thus Christmas came into our home each year for its short but resplendent life.
