We collect them over the years and they're full of sentimental value reminding us of love and good times ... until they don't.
If you're lucky they always remind you of love but0 this is life and it occurs with more regularity than Coca-Cola versions of Christmas. Still ornaments for the tree are ... special.
Last year I threw the ornaments collected over the years. Actually my Mom and daughter did. I'd fled to St. Martin. When I got home ... early because of Homeland Security issues ... Mom had thrown the artificial tree away because she thought that my plans were in poor taste. I wanted to have a tree burning party in the back yard. Just take the whole damn thing into the back yard, invite my carnival of friends, set the tree on fire and toast the end of what used to be.
The year marched along and there were summer breezes, parties that kept trumping the previous party, new work, Bar Church, then being in the Bar Church band (if we only had a bass player ... Mitch!), travel to every corner of the United States, and a home that continues the evolution into a new home.
Suddenly Thanksgiving was here, the college football season was ending, the weather turned to shit and then ... people started demanding that I get a Christmas tree.
It's best to be honest. When I leave the island of Tybee, an increasingly rare occurrence, aside from the Christmas lights that God has thrown across the sky, there is this boat at the Bull River Marina. The mast is decorated with white lights. A stocking hangs from the mainsail. It reminds me of summer breezes. My kind of Christmas!
In Seminary I paid good money to learn that Jesus was probably born in April or March. Not December. The early Church chose the date to kidnap the perfectly acceptable Druid celebration of Winter Solstice so they would go away and Christianity could continue its worldwide domination campaign.
{I need to say that I love the Druids. They ran naked in the woods to celebrate the Winter Solstice. We're thinking about starting a Tybee chapter. Let me know if you have interest in becoming a charter member.}
So on a cold windy day, I got a Christmas tree, brought it to my Key West influenced house and put on the new colored lights that I'd purchased because my ass got drug to Wally World.
After it was decorated, I opened up the drawer to look at the ornaments that Mom had not thrown out. She tried to be thoughtful about it and she got it mostly right. There was Sarah's bringing of JOY. A large peace sign that Shirley gave me. One from my childhood. Another from Chelsea. A pair of purple thong underwear and another pair of black pair of panties with stars on them.
When I'd finished, less than a quarter of the tree had ornaments.
Then Cheryl made an epiphany carrying a brown paper bag. Inside were ornaments. A creation by Dani and Ryan when they were kids and we all lived together. Flip-flops. A picture of holiness in a frame. Then she disappeared as soon as she came ... but the tree reeked of love.
Then Dee blew in with sponge from the ocean and Beach themed depictions of laundry hanging on a line (lose the laundry at the beach).
Then Cass made me a paper machete coloring of a cat.
Like my life, the Christmas tree suddenly has little rhyme or reason.
But it grows fuller.
Like my life.
The ornaments that remain are the dearest of friends. They are far more than dangling pieces of pretty.
They are Christmas ... the reason there was oil in the Hanuka lights ... and the reason Druids danced naked in the woods on the first day of Winter.
