I've been pruning our family celebration of Christmas for years. I think I've just about got myself a holiday that resembles a Bonsai...a miniature holiday...a tiny essence of yuletide...a suggestion of Christmas that focuses primarily on the returning light and the beginning of a New Year full of unlimited potential. The first "things" to go were the traditions that required buying things. I wasn't quite brave enough when my kids were small and I worked hard to have a holiday with homebaked goodies...filled stockings, candies, a gingerbread house, a cause to donate to or a child to give gifts to that was not a member of our immediate family...visits with both sides of the family, Christmas cards to all who lived a distance away, a yearly family ornament, a creche, a Christmas Eve visit from Santa, photos at the Mall, a real Balsam Christmas Tree and a mountain of gifts beneath it. I began my insane robot imitation the day after Thanksgiving and the battery went dead just about New Years Day. I wandered into the New Year completely exhausted, depressed and tearful...having missed some of the best moments with my kids cuz I was such a frenzy of activity preparing my nativity. And by January...I had a bad case of BITCH. And I wondered why. Slowly, over the years since the boys flew the coop, these traditions have passed into light. This year, my favorite custom occured before Thanksgiving. The making of the wreathes. This year we had a rare midweek visit from Sam and Cass and for the first time EVER, I had pals to make wreathes with. We took Sadie down to the river and up back into the woods to collect interesting boughs and branches, seedpods and dried flowers. We spent all morning gathering whatever we could find that seemed beautiful in it's bony November state...milkweed pods tossing up snow fairies, hydrangea blossoms gone gold, about 6 different kinds of evergreen branches exuding their fresh aroma, bright orange mushrooms with velvet undersides and the bright yellow red sparks of bittersweet that the winter birds love to steal once the snow flies. That took all morning and then we pulled out the potting table and set up shop...Sam built a bonfire while Cass and I began our whimsical approach to making the wreathes. Of course I think about my Mom as I wind the vines into a circle. She is in her November of her life. The dried pods, the seed pouches, the dried goldenrod and browning hydrangea all in the geriatric stage of their lifecycles...not alot of vitality left...but still beautiful. I pick them up and work them into the circle with gratitude. The milkweed stood as nursery to the monarch caterpillars and fed the chrysalis to the point of emergence as a butterfly. The hydrangea fed the hummingbirds and bees and any other bugs that stuck around to make their magic in my garden. The dead sunflower heads fed the goldfinches and lifted their heads to the sun as it made its daily journey around my garden. All these bits and pieces of dead nature had given all they could in life...and yet even as they stand lifeless and ready to become one with Earth when the first snow flies, there is joy to their presence. The milkweed pods look like birds if you turn them upside down...and the soft silky seeds take to the air like fairies and you know you have sent a seed into an unknown future...of life and growth. Last year, I made November wreathes out of all the dried stuff...they are really gratitude wreathes. And after Thanksgiving, I made evergreem boughs and circles to afix them to...the evergreens reminding me of that which is always a part of me...the people of my family that came before, the love that is ever green and nurturing me as I pass through the stages of my life. There is a lot to making a wreath! Then Sam took a photo of me looking through the wreath and I was struck by the wreath as portal...a place of entry that celebrates that which has passed, honoring the life of the nature filling my year by treating the dead with love...and awareness of the beauty that remains. That circle of remains afixed to the boughs of evergreens makes a doorway I can slip through into the New Year. It has become my favorite celebration by far. But in order for that day to happen...I had to snip away all the commercial "have tos" in my brainwashed mind. Even some of the main limbs had to be pruned. Its taken several years but I have come to the place where giving away and getting rid of is way more fun to me than recieving storebought stuff that suits no real purpose.When I remember the day I brought my boys home from Christmas dinner at my folks. They had recieved huge Tonka trucks from my Dad...the earthmovers...2 each. Dumpers, dozers, cranes...when we got all the stuff up to our third floor apartment at Middle Street, I wept because there was so much stuff from Christmas that we couldn't even walk across the room. That was my wake up call.
Now here I am. Damned if I'll go to the mall. I'll take my Christmas tree from the side of the new garage because eventually, we need to clear that area so the white pine may be Charlie Brownish...but it is tax free and it whispers to me about being celebrated by bringing it in and decorating it and on January 6th...we'll burn it in the fire pit tied with our prayers for the healing and peace of the worldwide family. I love Christmas. I gave birth to a child on the Winter Solstice. Will slipped through the portal to this life as a Caswell and has turned me into a tried and true pagan...celebrating the first day of the increasing light and the love of family and friends with a heart full of gratitude...and happy to share all I have. But like my Mom has mentioned time and time again, her greatest legacy and gift to humankind, is the gift of her children
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