The Tree

"It's finished, I have spent all day decorating and it looks beautiful. I bought some new decorations this year, cardinals, pinecones and reindeer. And for the first time in my life, I decorated the tree all by myself. It is really a reflection of me, of who I am at this point in my life.

Through the years of my life I have collected christmas decorations. I have recieved them as gifts, bought some myself and have inherited others from family, neighbours and spouses. They have been acquired in various countries I have lived and visited. Some are handmade, others mass produced and others hand crafted with great care in an earlier, more careful time. They all have meaning, they all are memories and like all memories they need to be looked at and sorted and some discarded.

When I took down the tree last year, I made a decision, one that I have followed through with. I sorted my decorations into groups, those I want to keep, those tattered and torn by years of use and those that I can no longer feel comfortable putting on my tree. The tattered and torn, with great reluctance and a few tears, after all they represent years of my life, I consigned to the garbage. Those I no longer want I packed away and have given to my daughter. Those I have retained now hang in glory on my tree.

The sorting reflects the personal growth I have been doing over the past few years. In a prior time, I would not have been able to throw anything so charged with my past, away. I would have kept it long after its usefulness or beauty was gone. I now know that what they can give a person is used up and like all things deserve to be let go of when it is time.

I have also learned that keeping items that have negative memories or that no longer reflect who you are is not justified. With this in mind, ornaments that I have never liked, that remind me of people or times I have no desire to remember or that relect a belief that I no longer subscribe to if I ever did, I have also let go of. This would include all christian christmas symbols. What I have in effect is no longer a Christmas tree, it is a Yule tree. A celebration of the rebirth of light, of life. It is what the christmas story is truly about. The rebirth of an ancient god who in turn represents light, the sun and the end of winter. What better time to celebrate this, then on the longest and darkest night of the year, when it truly must have felt, in times gone by, that the sun and heat and green, living things would never return. When one really needed to be reminded that, indeed, spring will come again, the sun and heat of summer will return and the rebirth that we so long for in the dark will happen.

My tree now represents this to me. It also represents my rebirth, that hidden me that so few actually see, the one I am trying so hard to become. Do I dare stand so tall, so bright, so open to the world? Do I dare let the world see that me, like I have let them see my non-christian christmas tree? Will anyone notice the difference in the tree, would they notice a difference in me?' I whisper.

Are you listening?