Christmas Tree Memories
by Diane Girard
Christmas trees are rich in symbolism. The tradition of bringing green boughs into the home goes back to pagan times. For many of us, they are among the first memories of the Yuletide season. The green represents hope, renewal, and the return of spring.
However, my earliest memory of Christmas does not include a green tree. I recall a small silver aluminum tabletop one. It revolved and the lights underneath the stand coloured it red, blue, yellow, or silvery-white but not green. I think my grandfather found the plans for the stand in a Popular Mechanics magazine and decided that we would be the first family on our street to have one. We were, but I was not pleased. I wished for a ‘real’ tree.
During the 1950’s the artificial tree made annual appearances. It did not tarnish, although it needed dusting when it came down from the attic and it smelled like old metal. The motor in the stand died after six years of faithful duty. The tree had no lights of its own but my mother placed a floor lamp close by so it could gleam, and every year, it did. In the end, I became attached to the thing not for its own sake, but for the memories it carried. I can see my grandfather, pipe in hand and shy smile in place as he opened a huge box, only to find another box inside, and then another. The sixth box revealed a Bulova watch. It was his last Christmas. He died in the spring, but his tree continued to appear each year in my mother’s home.
In the early 1960’s my husband and I bought a small old worker’s cottage, and I purchased my first real tree. It took pride of place in the living room, but I placed it too close to the heat and it lost most of its needles before the big day arrived. I had not known how to care for it and did not provide enough water. Nevertheless, we bought another one the following year. My daughter was six years old then, and she had the mumps on both sides. She curled up in her bathrobe beside our pine tree, but wished she could see the silver one at grandma’s house. A couple of years later, we had to sell our house and move to an apartment that banned evergreens.
I did not buy another tree until many years later when I was living alone. Have you ever tried to put a five-foot high tree into a stand all by yourself? It was a challenge I won’t forget. Cuts and scratches covered my hands by the time the thing stood lopsidedly in the corner of my living room. Like real life, real trees are messy and unpredictable. That one, which I dragged home through sleet, was scraggly and awkward, but it didn’t shed. Its persistence comforted me on my first Christmas in a new place. There were others after that, and of course, there was the year the tree fell over. Actually, there were two years when it toppled and one year when my cat pulled it down, in order to reach the tinsel, which he promptly ate and just as promptly spat out on my only good carpet. I reveled in the scent of the real trees I enjoyed during those years.
Still, there was no tree like that first aluminum one. When I went home to my mother’s house for Christmas, it always stood shining in the living room window. No matter how tired I was when I arrived, and usually I was exhausted from helping make the dark season bright or at least bearable for others, the silver glow told me all was well at home. In some ways, that metal bottlebrush object was like my mother, steadfast and always bright with hope.
After she died, I found the tree carefully stored in the attic. I almost took it with me, but I didn’t have room. Another sorrow heaped on my wheelbarrow full.
But, its meaning lives on. I am an apartment dweller again and cannot have a real tree. Instead, I have a small green plastic one. I’ve decorated it with lights and the many ornaments that were given to me over the years. There are clay hearts made by my grandsons when they were four and six years old, three antique chipped glass balls from my mother’s collection, several whimsical miniature bears from a close friend, and two lumpy red fabric birds made by the war veterans at Sunnybrook hospital. All are treasures. When I look at my tree, I see all the trees from the past, but most of all, I see that aluminum one. For me, it captured all that is best about the season of love freely given and joy remembered.
Diane Girard lives in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada near her family of a daughter and two grandsons. Diane began writing poetry and fiction in grade school and has continued to scribble for her own pleasure while earning a living in different ways. She has had several careers and is currently not considering becoming a consultant.
In the late 1960's, Diane worked in one of the first women's Information and Referral Centres in Canada. Diane worked for Bell Canada, the Law Reform Commission, a brokerage house and other employers too odious to mention before finding career happiness working with seniors. Comments may be sent to her via e-mail, girard772 at sympatico.ca
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