Christmas Tree

[poliphilo]

I think I'll get the Christmas tree out of its box.

It doesn't seem long since I last put it away. Hell- they don't make years as long as they used to.

It looks like it's going to be twilight all day long and I feel the need for sparkly things.

In the film I watched yesterday these Polish people were going to Midnight Mass. How comforting to be a Catholic in a Catholic country! To feel the sparkle as something not merely applied but as a deep, deep thing that wraps you round.

I've been asking myself what- if anything- I'm celebrating this year. And the answer is I don't really know and I don't think it matters. Christmas is older than any religion.

The world is full of snow and wolves but we have fire.

Throw on another log. Watch the sparks fly.

Comments

[geodesus-christ.livejournal.com]

The world is full of another log. Watch the wolves fly.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Smoke streaming from their burning tails.....

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

Beautifully said, and I latched right onto

How comforting to be a Catholic in a Catholic country! To feel the sparkle as something not merely applied but as a deep, deep thing that wraps you round.

(I have lost connection twice in the last few minutes...my life is sputtering out. My last words...cough:)

What an interesting idea, that we attempt by adding glitter to our houses and bringing trees inside to alter the dull unmagical world.

It's like ritual--incense and candles and robes to hide our high heels and suits--

As you said in your novel, we set up the atmosphere and hopefully the magic will arrive.

--And I am interested in the fact that the anticipation of the moment is where the real joy is. The day itself is so often woefully disappointing.

People have fights over Christmas dinner. The kids cry, and they break their toys. The dishes get washed.

Lots of people here in the United States toss their trees out by the curb by Christmas afternoon.

The magic's over. Time to buckle down.

But we tried. We all tried. We just didn't know what to do.

I like so much what you said:

but as a deep, deep thing that wraps you round

It's there, always. I can just probe a little and find it.

It feels like being in love.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

We put the tree up and dressed it and I felt- ever so faintly, distantly- the old magic.

Yes, you've hit it exactly- it's like being in love.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

And could we have a picture of your tree, please?

That would be fun!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Yes, why not?

I'll need Ailz's help, though.

She understands how to upload (or is it download?) pictures and I don't.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

Oh, good! Thanks to Ailz!

[sorenr.livejournal.com]

Oh, dear... A plastic tree! They're very rare sights in Denmark, y'know. Give me a real tree and proper candles on it, please! My christmas tree is always kept in a style which is more or less correct for a pre-1900 Danish setting; candles, paper ornaments, whatnot... It took some convincing the first time I wanted to talk some English people into sitting down and making all sorts of folded and woven ornaments out of paper, but eventually they got into it. Then, of course, came the challenge of talking them into sticking real candles on the tree...

I'm bringing a box of old-school Danish christmas-tricks to England when I go for Christmas!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

We used to have real candles when I was a kid. There were little spring-loaded holders that clipped onto the tree.

I don't think our tree is plastic. It has a wire armature and the needles are made of I don't know what- some kind of fabric.

There was a time when I insisted on a real tree but- my dear- the mess. Besides which I felt guilty about the poor thing being killed for our pleasure.

[sorenr.livejournal.com]

My candle-holders are "balanced", rather than clip-ons, but my granny has some nice clip-ons...

And a real tree doesn't make a mess if you treat it right! I can't stand living with an actual Christmas tree for more tha a week anyway, so for me it's fine bringing in the tree on Christmas Eve and chucking it before New Year's... Anyway; the tree will go in the wood-pile, so it will be burnt on the fire eventually, thus being far from wasted.

(Okay; heat is also for our pleasure, but I certainly don't feel guilty about that, given that it is a CO2 neutral source of heat... Oh, and I shouldn't feel guilty about chopping down a tree, even if it was merely for ornamental purposes. But then; I'm of a cruel stock; My mother and I once decided to cop the head of one of our chickens between Christmas and New Year because she thought its tail-feathers would look nice on her home-made party-hat! We did, of course, eat it as well.)

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

A tree with real candles would be ever so pretty.

But I expect there's a law against it in Britain.

We have laws against most things these days.

[sorenr.livejournal.com]

If there is a law against it, I'm going to break it!!! I'll have candles on my tree that will have been hand-cut in Grizedale Forest, and furthermore I shall have said candles hanging between pieces of paper in various shapes!

Deal with it, Britain!!!

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

There was a time when I insisted on a real tree but- my dear- the mess. Besides which I felt guilty about the poor thing being killed for our pleasure.

!

My nephew chopped down a little cedar for Kate and me one year, and I said I couldn't watch him murder it.

"What's the matter?" he said, like a tough guy. "Can't stand the sight of sap?"

But it is sad to see all those dried out trees after Christmas, the ones not chosen or the ones by the curb.

This way lies madness--no more weeding, no more cut flowers--and, inevitably and much more importantly, vegetarianism.

I've been putting vegetarianism much too long. It seems more and more urgently the right thing to do.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I don't like cut flowers. I like pot plants and cactii.

A woman I used to travel with on the bus gave me a single lemon geranium. This was about 12 years ago. Now the house is overflowing with its descendants.

[kaysho.livejournal.com]

When I was a pup, one of our childhood accomplishments was when we were old enough to be considered worthy of attending Midnight Mass. The atmosphere in the church without sunlight coming through the windows is magical, and enhances the great pouring-on of Christmas ritual.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

Beautifully said and exactly true for me, too.

And the staying up late with the grownups! As if admitted into a time of great secrets.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I was an Anglican/Episcopalian- not exactly the same thing as being a Catholic (less tradition, less authoritas) but the architecture and ritual are similar.

The lights are out. Everyone in the body of the church holds an unlit candle. A child's voice sounds in the West:

Once in Royal David's City....

And the first candle is lit.

The choir processes slowly down the aisle and a tide of light comes with them as candle is lit from candle.

[besideserato.livejournal.com]

"Hell- they don't make years as long as they used to."

You are so wonderful! And your Christmas tree looks good. We still don't have one. I don't really care too much for it, but Mother think it is a cardinal sin to not have a tree before the end of the first week of December, so I suppose I am going to go and find one before she has a coronary.

It is strange to be a Catholic and go to mass to see all the symbols of the old religion in a cathedral. People have no idea. It's amazing. But that's what makes the Catholic faith so much cooler than other Christian deviations. We are fully ornamental and beautiful and we have no shame about being total pagans.

It's fun.