Like most children, I was
always greatly excited when, at last, the time came to get the Christmas tree. In those early years, my father would pack my brothers and I into the family car to
head out to Lulu Island to find the most beautiful tree. Many years later, my
husband and I and our friends would go to a property in
Yellow Point where we could find, not a perfect tree, but one that was crowding
out another and should be removed to allow the better tree room to grow. Those
trees, my young daughter claimed, were like something from the Grinch Who Stole
Christmas: scrawny, crooked, misshapen. Eventually she bullied us into buying a
Christmas tree from a lot.
No matter where they were
found, all these trees provided a good base for lights and decorations and
offered that wonderful smell of the outdoors which so interested our various
cats and dog, but some of my favourite trees were the ones my husband and I had
in Montreal when we were first married. We had no decorations and very little
money but we managed to get a tree. I had remembered a Christmas story I loved
as a child about a lonely tree who was left behind when others were taken away
to homes where they shone with light and tinsel. Happily, some children went
out to hang cookies on that little tree and then the birds came to sit on the
branches making it the most beautiful tree of all. Inspired by that memory, I made
birds of various sizes from coloured construction paper and baked cookies with
faces made of raisins, nuts and bits of maraschino cherries.
The practice of bringing
evergreens in the home goes back hundreds of years. Egyptians, Romans, Celts
and Vikings liked to bring various green plants and evergreens into their homes
at the time of the winter solstice, in some cases to keep away evil spirits and
illness and in others to celebrate new seasons, new growth and life over
death.
The
origin of the modern Christmas tree is often attributed to Germany, and I grew
up singing O Tannenbaum in honour of that. One legend about the German
celebrations proposes that Martin Luther was responsible for the origin of the
Christmas tree in 1500. As the story goes, Luther was walking through the snowy
woods and was moved by the beautify of the snow glistening on the branches of
trees. In response to this he brought a small tree into his house and decorated
it with small candles to illustrate the Christmas sky.
It
was the Victorian period that brought trees into popular use in Britain and
North America. Queen Victoria, her German husband prince Albert and her
children were pictured around the Christmas tree: https://www.whychristmas.com/customs/trees.shtml
Indigenous
people have celebrated the winter solstice for millennia. While the tree is not
the focus of solstice festivities, Tsatassaya White tells me that the cedar
tree is of central importance to indigenous people, a tree of life that is a
central source for ceremony and for many applications including cooking, clothing
and ritual. To learn more about indigenous solstice festivals, you might sign
up for the livestream event that Tsatassaya and Crimson Coast’s Dance Society
are hosting on December 20th:
We continue to learn new things about the importance of
trees in our lives. A friend sent me this recent article in the New York Times
which describes the research of UBC Professor of Forest Ecology, Dr. Suzanne
Simard. The article describes her work
into mycorrhizal networks, the
underground communication systems through which the dynamic exchange of
resources and alarm signals through which resources and wisdom flow from the
biggest and largest to the youngest and smallest trees:
Reading about the awareness and sensitivity of trees makes me
wonder about the practice of cutting them down for our Christmas festivities,
but many articles suggest that the Christmas tree industry provides positive
benefits:
https://www.ag.ndsu.edu/yardandgardenreport/2020-12-03/a-greener-christmas-tree
There’s something
heartening about bringing a little of the outdoors into our homes. Not
just the scent, but the spirit of the tree. As it is an ancient symbols of
growth, transformation and connection, it’s not surprising that, at this time
of isolation and separation, our Christmas trees are inviting us to communicate
with them. We feel affection our
Christmas trees, as ee cummings described so poignantly in his poem Little Tree,
which my friend Mark sent to me yesterday:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47304/little-tree
Trees are sending out
good messages to us: Stay in place. Connect. Grow. Pay attention. Feel
grateful.
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