Memory Tree

I am culturally Christian, to be specific, culturally Lutheran. To be even more specific, cultural ELCA. But that's enough of geeking out on the religious specifics. I'm an atheist now, or I am until I can think of something that suits me better. That being said, I do love celebrating Christmas. This is probably because I am culturally Christian (let's keep this simple), but maybe because it is the way in which there are specific sensory experiences that are part of my Christmas nostalgia. I especially love the act of getting a tree, putting it up and decorating it. All while drinking spiked egg nog and listening to Elvis Presley's Christmas album, Bing Crosby's White Christmas, and anything by Amy Grant. There is something intoxicating about the mix of music, nog, pine needles, white lights, and ornaments that take me back to before my own life.

When Tori, my husband's daughter saw my tree and carefully inspected the ornaments, asking about one's that caught her attention. She loved the electrical relay that my brother had, when he was less financially robust, turned into a Christmas ornament and given to me (in fact a number of us in the family received this gift). After a few explanations and musings over the ornaments, she said, "You don't have a Christmas tree, you have a Memory tree".

Sitting here in the glow of the trees little white lights, I have to agree. It is a memory tree. These ornaments are a conversation with the past. For example, I have 2 of some ornaments. Why? Because when my mother died I received some of her ornaments, ornaments that she had bought in threes...one for my sister, one for me, and one for her. I think she liked the idea that we each had the same of something on our trees. Also, when she bought things she really liked, like a cookbook, she couldn't help getting 2 more so that my sister and I could both have one. Looking at any of my two identical ornaments reminds me of this quality of my mother's. It is a memory of her, of her character, of our bond. Or I look at the 1960s plastic ornament of the angel (or it once looked like an angel, now not so much), and I am reminded of the Pennybakers and their endless supply of mixed cocktails and salted peanuts on the coffee table. Their fantastic and terrifying fights. Maryanne was German and her husband, John, was American, they met during WWII and he brought her home as his wartime bride. They were as different as night and day, but the one thing they loved equally were poolside parties with lots of alcohol, or coming over to our house for our various gatherings and imbibing on the good whiskey my mother always kept for when my uncle would come over. Maryanne was a cheerful person, whereas John sulked and brooded, a condition that worsened with the amount of liquor applied. Maryanne would just become impatient and unhinged with him. There is also the ornament that I picked up at a market in South Dakota. It is a dream catcher. The only one I have gratefully, because I am often embarrassed by the roadside kitsch us tourists partake in when on reservations though in the meanwhile not offering any real understanding or attention to what Native people have endured and are enduring. But I like this dream catcher because it was made by an elderly woman who pressed it into my reluctant hands, and I paid her directly, in cash. Somehow it seemed to make things better. My prized ornament, or one of them, is the one I made in Kindergarten for my mom. It has various dried pasta and beads not so skillfully glued to a piece of cardboard with my name scrawled on the back. I remember the pride with which I gave it to my mother, and the joy at seeing it carefully hung in the tree.

But it isn't just the tree with ornaments, it is the smell. The smell of the pine in the house, and the act of putting it up. These physical aspects of making Christmas happen help to conjure other trees, other tree trimmings, the people who were part of the Christmas story in our home. The tree becomes the heart of the home. A place where people gather to talk or, as in the case with my sister and I when we were children, to dream about what lay in those packages, especially those wrapped in the magic brown paper and tied with twine from Switzerland. The way the Christmas tree lights spill across the coffee table in the otherwise dark living room where I sit now reminds me of the way the multi-colored lighted star of my childhood tree refracted on the ceiling. I would lay on the carpet and stare up at the ceiling mesmerized by the design captured there.

My Memory Tree this year is as beautiful as any other. And today is the winter solstice in which Earth is tilting away from the sun, at least for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere. Tilting away from the sun, but ultimately moving us towards Spring. This shortest day of the year I sit here huddled with my Memory Tree in front of the Christmases of times gone by. My Yule log is these memories. They warm me. The remind me of who I am. They help me feel connected even as my Christmases have become smaller and smaller.