The Summoning of the Tree Spirit

Thank God for Christmas. And Hanukkah. And Yule. And probably a myriad of midwinter gatherings of light, food, and family I’ve never even heard of. Winter is tough, and most of us benefit from something to make it more bearable. Personally, I consider myself lucky to live in an era where frozen earth need not equate to a hungry belly, but even though I can gain eight hundred lumens of light at the flick of a switch, how much more pleasure is there in one hundred little five lumen bursts on a string? Or just fifteen in a candle’s steady glow?

I love Christmas. I can’t lie, my religious affiliation is to Christmas itself. In my Nativity a pinecone spreads its roots beneath the floorboards of a home, it’s thickening stem unfurling branches clad in glossy needles that never fall, while wide-eyed children shine with gravitational brightness, and contented adults low in gentle, flatulent wonder at the miracle in their living rooms. Three wise men arrive and bestow tinsel, fairy lights, and shining baubles upon the peaceful tree, at no additional effort to mummy, and by the time those fairy lights are turned off again, we can all begin to tell that the days are definitely getting longer once more.

Christmas is my saviour, and as a devotee I engage in ritual acts of worship throughout the month of December. The first, obviously, is to festoon my already cluttered house with deified plastic. That’s right, my Christmas trees are plastic. So shoot me. These range in age from ten to twenty years and you’ll note that no tree is put out to pasture. When I acquire a new tree, I simply put up another tree. Currently there are six in the house, the smallest being just one foot high and accompanying me on my desk as I write. This particular tree has been erected in hotel rooms across at least three continents as well as in international airspace. Do not assume that I am joking. These plastic trees, by their ritualistic adornment with stringed trinkets, undergo a process of transubstantiation which allows the tree spirit to reside in my home through the darkest days of winter. Again, the assumption that I’m being humorous would be misplaced. Sometimes, I expend significant resources in terms of time, effort, and money, to visit with other Christmas trees, which I generally find a most gratifying pursuit. The de-mobbing of the Christmas tree is an occasion of solemnity and reflection about which I suffer anticipatory grief from around 4 PM on Christmas Day.

Scattered throughout the month of December I try to make time to meditate upon the meaning of Christmas by watching Christmas movies. Frequently the movies must be divided into bite-size pieces due to other commitments, but it is nevertheless important to me that I make ready my mind and my spirit by the watching of them. For clarity, Die Hard IS a Christmas movie. It is less about content, and more about background decor. The Trinity is completed by the painstaking preparation and consumption of seemingly absurd concoctions of dried fruits and fats.

Of course while you CAN observe the birth of Jesus Christ, the lighting of the lamp or the return of the sun on your own, these are rituals of congregation, and crucially, so is my worship of Christmas. I could do all this alone, but if the Baby Jesus had intended us to eat roast potatoes without gravy he would have made them less damn satisfying together. Now don’t get me wrong, I love trees. I can bask in the joy of a tree without another human in sight. But you don’t think I’m cruising at 40,000 feet with a Christmas tree on my seat back table ALONE do you? What kind of a nincompoop do you take me for?

So let me paint for you a fuller picture. There are six Christmas trees in my house. One is in my bedroom. This is an important tree, because my bedroom faces out onto the street, and every afternoon I make sure that tree is lit so that the children being picked up from the nearby school in the premature dusk will see it standing in the window. Another tree is in my kitchen. This is an important tree because every morning, when my children are groggy and dreading school, this is the tree that will twinkle at them over breakfast and remind them that home is waiting for them, whatever their days bring. A third is in my daughter’s room. This tree is important because it reminds her that she is important enough to have a tree in her room, and she doesn’t always feel important. My son has a funny kind of tree in his room, a kind of light sculpture that he chose with the immutable certainty of a toddler, and this too is an important tree because it reminds him that there are constants, and he needs constants to feel safe. I have not counted this tree in my tally, as it makes no pretence at harbouring a tree spirit as far as I can see.

The fourth tree is here on my desk, keeping my spirits up when I am working from home, and the fifth is known as “mummy’s tree”. It stands in the hallway, flocked and decked with genuine glass baubles. We all agree it is the most beautiful. But the most beloved? That is the sixth tree. This is the tree in the lounge. Seven feet of ropey, sparse branches, held in place with a haphazard system of tying broken branches to sturdy ones, lilting with drunken bravado at an angle that lesser trees would be incapable of sustaining through advent. THIS tree is the MOST important tree. This is the tree it is forbidden to decorate alone. Every year, it stands bare until such time as the family can be convened and the shared enterprise of Christmas can begin. The four of us (no more, no less, guests are not welcomed) hurl tinsel and baubles at this thing with such a gaudy lack of inhibition that by the time the job is done, it is only by its conical shape and a well ingrained recognition of Christmas symbolism that it can be recognised as a tree at all. When the last bauble is hung (or wedged, as many have lost their tops) the children share the responsibility for together placing the star upon the top, and when the star stops falling off and stays, usually on the third of fourth attempt, atop the tree, that is when the tree spirit enters the house and brings ALL the trees to life.

Similarly, baking must be done en famille. Of particular note is the decoration of the gingerbread house, and the piece de resistance - the decoration of the Christmas cake. The latter in particular requires extensive discussion of theme and planned execution, with designs which make a strength of the tension between collective and individual endeavour inherent in artistic collaboration especially favoured. We have done penguins, waddling about the ice, elves manning the production lines, a commune of snowmen and a village of houses amidst the trees, each different, each the same, each part of the whole. For this ritual, guests are welcomed to contribute.

But here I must come to a sadness. The Christmas movies I watch alone. I didn’t used to. No, there was a time where I would put on Home Alone when I was not. Home alone. But now? Well, they grow, don’t they, the children. Gone entirely are the days when the bottom branches bore the brunt of the onslaught. Each time they put the star on that tree they can reach a little higher, and they are asked by the world to reach a little higher. Each year, the artistic use of marzipan and icing gets a little more sophisticated, and so do their worries and fears. Each year the eyes grow less wide, and see more, and each year their light becomes more measured in its intensity, more moderated, more shaded.

This year, we face some particular challenges. It has not been a good year for us, and though these are not my stories to tell, I must be permitted to acknowledge that things are pretty bad around here right now. And some of that badness means that some of that goodness may be out of reach for us. And suddenly, in the shadows of genuine struggle, watching Christmas movies on my own does not seem so bad after all. I know. Took a turn, didn’t it.

I have mixed feelings about rituals. There are comforts in them. Safety, anchor points, moments of reset. But I think they can also become flash points for discomfort, for pressure, for moments of challenge. And this year, some of our rituals will be too uncomfortable, too pressured, too challenging. Don’t worry, the star is atop the tree, but the rest? We will do our best, of course, but perhaps it is when we confront the loss of a ritual that we truly recognise its purpose in our lives. Let me paint you a third picture. Don’t worry, this one will more to the point.

There are six trees in my house, because I want to build a nest for my loves in the darkness. There are fruit cakes and plum puddings and gingerbread at my fingertips because to share what we have with one another is the outward expression of love. There are Christmas movies on my mind because a Christmas movie is a story of hope prevailing, every time.

This year, we come into Christmas knowing some things will need to be different. I would prefer to say modified, not lost. Because there remains a will, between us, to make our nest warm and strong, to buffer the weather and keep us safe through long winter nights. And there remains too a desire to share what we have, to take joy in one another’s efforts, to recognise ourselves as different, as the same, as part of a whole, and also, increasingly, as whole apart. There remains an abiding love. So yes, things are hard, but this is when we recognise that rituals are little more than strings of behaviours we repeat in pursuit of the feeling we get when we perform them, and there are many routes to a feeling if we are prepared to explore new paths. This winter, some of our rituals will prove to be too much, and we must be ready to remember not what we always do, but why we always do it. We need to be ready for that, even when it makes us sad. But some rituals we will keep. This weekend, I hope we will get that cake baked. I hope too that we will get the gingerbread house in the oven, but it might be too much. In the meantime, bolster me with stories where hope prevails, and I will keep a lamp burning until the sun returns.