I’ve always loved the Christmas season. I love the lights, I love unwrapping the ornaments from their paper shelters each year, I love the ritual of hanging each precious ornament on the tree. With the hanging of the ornaments come memories. Jeff and I remember where the oldest ornaments came from. We remember those we love so dearly who have been gone for many years. We tell each other, again each year, as if it was our first time decorating the tree with these colorful balls, the story of this ornament, the person who comes to mind as we hang another. We like the presence of the decorated tree in the room, the colored lights that circle the branches, lit for most of every day.
And then the day comes when the lights come down, and the window that looks over the street will be in view to us again. The day the lights come down must be the saddest day of the year. As each year passes, the decorated tree becomes more important to us. We’ve taken its presence in our lives for granted for a long time now, but as we see our friends’ and colleagues’ lives changing, we know our own are changing, too. There are fewer of these colorfully lit evenings ahead of us than are behind us. There are fewer precious holiday times when we enjoy so many friends at our table, when we play the Christmas carols again and again. Even in the mild climate of northern California, we manage as best we can to bring “cozy” into our house. The Christmas tree provides a sampling.
“And we’ll all sing hallelujah, at the turning of the year,
and we’ll dance all day, in the old-fashioned way,
’til the shining star appear…” – Richard Thompson, “I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight,” 1974.
Today is Epiphany, the festival of the Three Kings, a tale that is central to the Christmas story. My mother called this day “Russian Christmas,” her way of acknowledging the Orthodox celebration that follows our own holiday by two weeks. When I was young, my mother didn’t begin to take down the ornaments and the tinsel, the “icing” on the tree until Epiphany.
By the calendar, the days are already beginning to lengthen, and the celebration of Christmas marks that return to the longer days. We’ve begun to light the colored lights on the tree less, and tomorrow, we’ll take the ornaments off the tree, one by one, carefully covering each one with tissue and placing it gently in its storage box. Even the storage boxes and the tissue papers are old, having seen many Christmases past.
Just as we have seen many Christmases past, and passing.
