Christmas trees

 I’ve only bought one Christmas tree ever.  I grew up with big ol’ trees laden with tinsel and ornements and the expediton to pick the right tree out – mom was really into Christmas.  There’d be a stack of Christmas records on the phonograph all day, and wonderful smells from the kitchen and a happy, harried mom.  Good memories.

Well, sad story, she died when I was 15, and dad died a few months later, and the last family Christmas I really had was in 1976.

Of course, the main family gathering was at my mom’s relatives house – Gramma and Granpa put on Christmas for the whole family, and their daughters and their son with their families would come.  After my parents died, we went to private schools and came "home" for the family Christmas gathering for a few years,  but it had a big hole in it for me, and I was lost and confused anyway, so the last family gathering I really went to was in 1984, when me and my new wife drove across the US from Providence to SoCal to go to the gathering.

We moved to Japan in 1985 and lived there until 1987, the first time, and then I lived there from 1993 to 1996.  Japan is not a Christian country; December 25th is just another day there.  It is a Massive commercial holiday there – you cannot doubt the season.  Decorations in stores and Santa and his reindeers here and there, but it’s all about gift-giving, and the Japanese are pretty fanatical gift-givers.  There is a system of it – who gives what to who and when and what the appropriate gift back is.  I didn’t understand the protocall and let my Japanese wife be boss of that aspect of life.  I was teaching English there anyway. so my students would give me gifts, while my gift to them, of course, was being their teacher.

Christmas trees are not uncommon in Japan (and a lot of them come from…Oregon) – they are, after all, the symbol of the season, and the western world, and the US in particular have had a very large influence on Japan.  There are Christmas trees in all the stores tarted up for the "holiday" and they are available for home buying, but omg, they are VERY expensive.  I never got one there.

The first Christmas we were married, we were living in Providence, RI.  My wife was finishing her BFA, but we had been living in Maine, when I was in the Navy, and when we moved back to Rhode Island, we took a three foot tall blue spruce tree from Maine with us.  It was growing in a five gallon paint bucket, and it became our Christmas tree for 1984.  We left Providence in ’85 after my wife graduated from school and we moved to Japan.  We left the tree in Providence.  It had grown well and was too big for it’s bucket anyway, so I carefully planted it behind our apartment building, where, in 1997, my now former wife visited Providence and said it was 8 feet tall and thriving.

I’ve never really felt like it was a good thing to cut down a living tree just so I could have one inside by the fire.  In ’84, when we drove out to California, we stayed with my brother for Christmas and bought a tree with him – a synthectic Family Christmas, but I have never bought one for myself.  I’m not like, anti-Christmas or anything, and being poor most of my life probably has had a lot to do with it, but I’ve just never felt good about killing a tree just to have it in my house for a week or two.

(It used to be, when I had some land dreams, I’d dream about buying a Christmas tree farm.  Oregon is one of the largest exporters of Christmas trees.  I suppose you might say I’m conflicted on the subject)

I Like seeing yours, so please don’t think I’m like, condemming you for buying one.

Enjoy the best of the season!

*****