I have a perfect Christmas Tree. I went out with the intention to buy one, and did, at Target, on a very warm and sunny day. Warm like 70 degrees warm, sucka.

I have a thing for Christmas Trees. I don’t really care about other Christmas stuff at all. I like presents, of course, the buying and receiving of. Also I have been known to be fond of alcohol-laced eggnog. But I am not a Christian (or anything anti-Christian, I just believe in the Great Spirit, dude) so I don’t get into the setting up of mangers and I am definitely not the type to put a giant Santa or Reindeer in my front yard. But a tree… I take care of a dying Christmas tree better than I take care of my one live plant. Why? I like to think it is because I have some crazy collective memory thing going on, that goes back to my days as a pagan many centuries ago. But it is probably a bit simpler than that.

When I was thirteen I watched my mom watch our Christmas tree. For some reason, this one year she was totally into that tree and she sat in front of it for hours, staring at it, totally happy. At least that’s the way I remember it. The overall feeling for me was, my mother is at peace. Everything is going just right at the moment. She is happy and she loves that Christmas Tree. She was younger than I am now and red and yellow Christmas tree lights picked up her happy energy and projected it back, towards me. I am not a painter but I could paint that, if you gave me the right paints.

Life goes in cycles though, and three years later I spent my first Christmas on my own. I was sixteen and had my very first tree, and bought my very first ornaments. My life was in total upheaval but I had my little tree, and it grounded me. I still have those first ornaments. Every year I buy a couple more. In Venice I bought some crazy disco earrings and made ornaments out of them, and I have a manger scene in a tiny coconut shell I bought in Budapest. (Yeah, I know, I am not into manger scenes but this thing is really cool, also it goes on a Tree.)

So I have my little tree, the one that called out to me at Target. It is only four feet tall so I put it on an empty box covered with pillowcases. It’s got the ornaments collected over twenty three years of my life on it’s branches and a little copper mesh heart I bought at a garage sale this morning crowns the top. Underneath is a little pink princess, and under that, the coconut shell manger. Jesus, I am such a girl sometimes. Shit, did I just say Jesus? Fuck.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 11th, 2004 at 11:31 pm and is filed under Tales from a Strange Land. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.