It is the first Christmas I literally did nothing. I did not decorate a tree, did not hang lights or a wreath outside. I did not purchase a single Christmas present. I’m wondering if I’m having my own personal protest.
When I was young – the month of December all led up to one special night and morning and afternoon and evening. There were rituals we repeated over and over and I was filled with warmth and love and peace, but mostly, with magic. A dreamy feeling in my heart and consciousness, my focus would sharpen, my eyes would close and my ears and senses would open to the possibilities my imagination put forward.
I miss the rituals. Right after my mother’s birthday in mid December the festivities would begin. We kept the same advent calendar my entire life: reused each year, we had to be meticulously careful when opening the little doors each morning so as not to rip the worn out card stock. We would hunt for a tree at a local farm or on a friends property. Tromping through the snow, looking for the best doug fir (my Mom was firm on the doug firs as best for our ornaments). I remember my red rubber snow boots lined with sheepskin. They matched my red snowsuit with the faux sheepskin rim around the hood. (BTW, who thought rubber snow boots were a good idea?! They’re effing freezing. And Mom, seriously, red was YOUR favorite color. Not mine 🙂 We’d get the tree home and wrap with some cocoa and then would come the decorating.
First, the ornament storage baskets would come down from the crawlspace upstairs. (Someone had to stick there head into the cobwebby crawlspace with a flashlight (because headlamps had not been invented for the average lay-person yet) and between the two of us that someone was usually me. Opening those baskets each year was like being visited by a really good, old friend. Each ornament had it’s own wrapping and box inside those baskets. Most of them were straw – taking after what I’m told is a scandinavian tradition. Others may have been made out of wood or glass but most everything on our tree was natural.
There would be so many ornaments. And by the rules of ornament hanging, each had to hang freely, without resting on another branch. It would seem impossible in the beginning that a mid-size little fir tree could actually have enough branches to hold all the ornaments in our collection, but here is where the christmas magic began each year. We would always fit all the family ornaments: year after year, no matter how small the tree, they would fit and sway gently with the breeze when anyone walked by.
By the end of the evening, the house lights would be dark, the tree alight. Candles on our mantlepiece and the circle of angels, spinning from the heat of little votives below, would set off the chimes of two little bells. The refraction of the tree lights through the glass ornaments spilled sparkles and flares across the walls and ceilings. The tiny little cicada ornament, (one of the few plastic ornaments) when switched on, would periodically interrupt the perfect peace with it’s locust call, making us giggle and smile each time. If you listened really, really hard – you could hear the filament in each christmas light make the tiniest of tinkling sounds as it flicked on and off, not fast, but just occassionally, like a city getting ready for sleep at night.
Even when I was not so young, we would read “The Tomten” or “Tomten and the Fox” before bed. An swedish elf-like creature, the Tomten creeps around on silent little feet, protecting the farm animals at night, even feeding Reynard, the fox, to keep him fat, happy and out of the henhouse. The pictures were full of snowy countryside, cast blue by the light of a full moon. A scene my family would imitate on cross-country skis whenever there was a full moon holiday.
Decorating was like a sacred act in my house. Decorating in general always was with my mother. Decorating for Christmas showed off the height of her prowess; whimsy, tradition, quirky and exquisite. Every last thing was in it’s place. The stockings with toes in them (a different chocolate, nut, pencil eraser or small earring in each toe) the Dala Horses and straw Julbocken on the table, the wooden carved tomten with his sheaf of grain and little ceramic bluebirds he fed on the window sill.