Saturday, December 10, 2005
MY TREE IS AND SHALL REMAIN....
... A CHRISTMAS TREE.
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As a longtime non-believer, I wish to weigh in on the side of the 'Christmas Tree'. A 'Holiday Tree' has no personal or cultural meaning. There's no Holiday Tree on Memorial Day; no Holiday Tree on the Fourth of July; no Holiday Tree on Labor Day; no Holiday Tree on Thanksgiving; and, in my home, no Holiday Tree on Christmas. That Martha Stewart contraption I erected in the living room this morning is a Christmas Tree and stands there to commemorate Christmas as a day of celebration of a two-thousand year old tale of wonder and good will. I suspect a 'Holiday Tree celebrates a tradition of Red Tag Sales.
.When I was a wee lad living out my Christmases in the sagebrush steppes of the Columbia Basin, we did not have access to Christmas Trees. There were no Christmas Tree farms or Christmas Tree lots and I imagine most people didn't have an indoor tree at Christmas. My earliest memory of a tree may have been in Othello around 1939 or 1940 ... and all I recall is my mother clipping candles to the tree branches, lighting them while people stood around, and then shortly blowing the candles out to keep the tree from igniting ... and a cardinal and a robin that clipped to the branches.
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After my Dad became a Section Foreman on the Milwaukee Railroad and we moved to Smyrna (twenty-two miles west of Othello), we always had a tree. Several of the trainmen who worked in that Division, were high school classmates of Dad and Mom. They would stop an eastbound freight train up in the Cascade Mountains and cut a bunch of trees and 'pass them out' as they headed east towards Spokane. Due to train-times our tree usually arrived around dusk (4:00 or 4:30 pm). The trainmen would have phoned ahead on the company phone and let us know that delivery was imminent, and we'd be gathered near the tracks as the train hove into view. Delivery was just about the most exciting part of Christmas. The train did not slow down. The fireman would be out on a little platform holding the tree. The engine whistle would be shrieking. And as the locomotive swept past, the fireman would launch the tree into the air. And Christmas began!
# posted by Clear Creek Girl : 4:07 PM
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I am going to continue to say Merry Christmas, and to celebrate Christmas -- because it is Christmas. NOT 'winter break', not 'holiday'...just Christmas.
Hopefully, as long as I am smoking 25 feet away from any public building when I say "Merry Christmas" I won't get arrested.
Hopefully, as long as I am smoking 25 feet away from any public building when I say "Merry Christmas" I won't get arrested.
At Costco on Saturday the checker said Merry Christmas to the person in front of us and then exclained, "That was so fun! To say Merry Christmas! I can't say it unless they say it to me." So when we were through checking our stuff we both said "Merry Christmas" so she could say it back. THAT'S A CRIME!!!!! Happy Holidays my foot!
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