My mother used to tell the story of a child who cried so hard when the family was going to take down their Christmas tree that the parents relented and left it up till spring. (This child was not me!) It seems to me each time we passed their house she told that story. I am sure that is not the case but it is how I remember it. I have thought of that child, that house, several times over the last week. Though I have not been reduced to tears at the prospect of taking down my tree, I have chosen to let it stand and turn the lights on every morning when I get up. It is still dark outside so it brings that little thrill of light that happened the first time the lights lit up the limbs of this sweet evergreen that has accompanied my family through the holidays. Morning and night the lights are burning.The lights bring such warmth and joy in the midst of the frigid cold and the gray days. Why rush getting rid of that brilliant sight?

This past week a poem by Jane Kenyon came to me in two different emails. Its title says it all…Taking Down the Tree

“Give me some light!” cries Hamlet’s
uncle midway through the murder
of Gonzago. “Light! Light!” cry scattering
courtesans. Here, as in Denmark,
it’s dark at four, and even the moon
shines with only half a heart.

The ornaments go down into the box:
the silver spaniel, My Darling
on its collar, from Mother’s childhood
in Illinois; the balsa jumping jack
my brother and I fought over,
pulling limb from limb. Mother
drew it together again with thread
while I watched, feeling depraved
at the age of ten.

With something more than caution
I handle them, and the lights, with their
tin star-shaped reflectors, brought along
from house to house, their pasteboard
toy suitcases increasingly flimsy.
Tick, tick, the desiccated needles drop.

By suppertime all that remains is the scent
of balsam fir. If it’s darkness
we’re having, let it be extravagant.

It really is about the light and the desire to have more of it. And, I believe, the inner push to keep it up also is about all the memories that hang on its branches. Ornaments that offer up little messages from years and years of gifts received and collecting. They stand as a monument to certain parts of life and the fact that a person thought of someone in our family enough to choose an ornament that would travel through months and years… even if we don’t remember the giver. But that is not really the case. Each year as I lift a fragile creation from its eleven month home in the attic, I recount how each one came to find a few weeks stay on the tree. There is one ornament I cherish, given to me by a five year old girl, who is now an adult, a mother and yet when I pull that ornament out of the box I always send a little photo of it to her reminding her of the sweet child she was. 

Decorating the Christmas tree has many layers of meaning.It carries the traditions that have lived in a house and those that perhaps so longer find room there. Taking it down signals an ending of one year and the beginning of another. And sometimes we are just not ready for the letting go, for the energy needed to begin the newness that is calling. 

Eventually I will take the tree down. I will tuck the ornaments safely back into their little compartments in the red and green plastic box that keeps them safe and ready for next year. But I may just hold onto some of the lights and drape them over the mantel so I can yell out like Hamlet’s uncle: “Give me some light!” It seems a good thing to do until the light outside begins to grow and shed some warmth once again. Seems like a plan to me.