Letter To My Christmas Tree

Christmas tree, we need to talk. I am a single man in my late forties. Life has dealt me some disappointments, sprinkled among times of incredible joys, and what I think were times of real happiness. I am so thankful for those. The world is hard sometimes, it really is. But when I was young, my parents celebrated Christmas. Every year I could count on seasonal treats from my mother’s able kitchen, and I knew that on some family night we would be decorating the tree. I could count on festive lights and gatherings of friends. I looked forward to Christmas hymns. There’s something about Christmas music, but especially the hymns. I guess in retrospect I would call it a sense of wonder. I have no doubt that part of this wonder was because the onslaught of Christmas marketing we saw on television and, when we were really young, the Sears catalog. It’s how we’re supposed to feel, right? But it makes it no less meaningful to me now.

I went away for a while from you, Christmas tree. For a while I plied my will, trying out my own Christmas holidays. Sometimes, I have to admit, I allowed some cynicism to enter in about Christmas. I boycotted the commercialism and the crowds of people in department stores disgusted me. There were some years where I didn’t have a Christmas tree at all. For a year or two I wouldn’t sing Christmas hymns because I wasn’t sure how I felt about Jesus. That makes me pause, right there. As much as the hardcore Christians, the real true believers would have me believe it should be, Christmas isn’t about that for me. It’s about memories. It’s about a time that somehow felt like rest, like another kind of salvation, like a life raft I could climb aboard during the rainy Oregon winters. It was the feeling of salvation that was wrapped up in the virgin birth; it was beautiful and felt right. From my vantage now it’s not important that I know everything about Jesus, what was true or not true. What I choose to believe is that a merciful God that is made of love is somehow related to me, and that that Being somehow knows me. In effect, that’s the Christmas message anyway, even if I don’t proclaim myself a standard Christian by any stretch of the imagination right now. Anyway, I'll still read the Christmas story sometime between now and Christmas Day, even if it’s to myself. I will have soft music in the background and the Christmas lights will be on. No doubt I’ll cry, and feel like I am climbing aboard a raft again, and I will feel tendrils of salvation reaching toward me like Mary’s hair might have done as she bent towards her only son.

Christmas tree, your smell fills my house with Christmas. It fills my heart to full. It fills my mind with memories of friends and families. I am grateful for all of them. You are a gift to me, Christmas Tree. Thank you for being here tonight.