Slowly the remnants of what held the Christmas holidays is being dismantled. My Mother took our Christmas tree down on the day after Christmas. No Boxing Day or Twelve Days of Christmas for her. Time to begin a new year and get the living room back to normal. I tend to linger over the process. It is a slow practice of putting things back into boxes and then into the attic. First the small Santas and trees that line the mantle and tabletops. Then the various pictures with Christmas and winter themes that have been hung on the wall for these December days, to be replaced by others that hang there at other times of the year.

But the Christmas tree is the last. I can’t seem to let go of the light that dances from its branches during these dark days. In the last years I have appropriately, I think, named the emotion that accompanies this necessary act of removing the tree: Grief. There is a certain amount of grief that rests on the removal of the ornaments, of the tree. Just as there was the bittersweet feeling of each colorful bauble out of storage, remembering where they came from, when they were purchased or received, allowing the memory of it all to make its home on the branches of this tree that literally gave its life for our enjoyment. When the ornaments are removed and placed again in the red and green box, those same memories are tucked away for another year. Much will happen between this season and its arrival again in twelves months. The way in which our hands reach for them again will have another year of living etched upon them. So there is the grief of letting go of what has been and the uncertainty of what experiences will shape their removal when the time comes again. In so many ways this act of decorating a tree carries with it more than the experience of festivity. It can be, if we are awake, a yearly marker of our life. 

Yesterday as I removed the ornaments from our tree, I lingered a bit over a few. There are ones with names printed on them. Gifts from friends and family members. We continue to hang the ones with my husband’s name on them even though he left us four years ago. So those carry special meaning. There is one given to me by a five year old, a small guitar painted in Christmas green and red, her name printed by her Mother who also left us this year. This five year old has become a sweet friend/sister/daughter over the years and I always send a quick photo to her of the ornament to remind her of how long our lives have been entwined. And there is the oldest on the tree. A gift from my grandmother’s friend it catches the heat and shine of the lights sending its wheel whirling. It was a fascination for me as a child and became the same for my sons. 

Yes. There is much that happens in the decorating of a Christmas tree. Beginnings and endings. Memories both beautiful and raw. I was pleased to read this poem by Jane Kenyon called “Taking Down the Christmas 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.

A bit of the scent from the tree lingers… mostly in the needles that seem to appear no matter how much I vacuum. In the endings of last year and the beginnings of this one, there is the darkness and the promise of light that will replace that which shone from the tree. May they, may we, live on in extravagance.