The Same

 The Same

Tomorrow is the one and only day that our calendar and the Christmas tree farm are open at the same time.  We’ll be looking for a nice balsam to place in our living room.  My father always bought a balsam.  He said that the needles last longer than other short-needled trees.  That was his reasoning.  My reasoning for choosing a balsam if at all possible is that it is what my father would have chosen.  Anything else wouldn’t be quite the same.

I guess that I wrote the paragraph above from the vantage point that there would be no question, but that we would go cut down a real tree.  I think that all of our children have now opted for artificial trees.  I get it.  They are much more lifelike these days.  They are perfect.  Maybe part of it for me is that they are too perfect.  They are convenient; you just have to bring them up from the basement, or garage rafters, or wherever you store yours for eleven months per year.  Balancing schedules, and hoping that the weather isn’t too warm or too cold, too snowy or not snowy enough is more challenging.  But I think that, for me, to not fill the house with the scent of a fresh-cut tree just wouldn’t be quite the same.

Last Saturday was cookie baking day at our house.  We had our daughter, two daughters-in-law, one son and five of our grandchildren mixing and baking and decorating our family’s traditional Christmas cookies.  We’ll visit their houses at some point in the Christmas season and perhaps sample a cookie or treat from the in-law family traditions, but at our house we have Christmas cutouts, some gingerbread cookies, chocolate pixies, and some people call them Mexican wedding cakes, some Russian tea cakes, but I call them ‘little white round ball cookies’.  All of those were what my mother baked all those years.  If I couldn’t smell them baking and enjoy a quality check sample or two it just wouldn’t be the same.

The evening Michelle and I took down Thanksgiving and began to put up Christmas decorations inside the house she put up the Nativity set [minus for now the baby Jesus who won’t be added until Christmas morning] that her mother hand-painted back when Michelle and her siblings were children.  She gave the set to us our first Christmas under the guise of not wanting to bother with it, and not having a place for it when they bought new living room furniture.  The reality is she knew we couldn’t afford a nativity set of our own.  The ox is missing one horn, and the donkey is missing an ear, and one of the camels has a couple of chips where the white plaster shows through.  We have talked about replacing it with something bigger, more beautiful now that we can afford it, but to put up something different just wouldn’t be the same.

This weekend when we decorate the tree we’ll use the ornaments that we have spent 45 years collecting.  Each year we mark the blessing of time together by buying a new tree ornament.  It is a good way to remember special trips, or events, or anniversaries.  We talk about them as we come across them and put them on the tree.  This year we have ornaments from Portugal and Poland to add to our collection.  If we didn’t have something on our tree marking another year together it just wouldn’t be the same.

Most importantly, like every year that we’ve been together, Michelle and I will make our way to Mass on Christmas Eve.  We will hear the ancient hymns.  We will hear the glad tidings of great joy proclaimed.  We will watch as the Christ child is placed in the manger scene.  To celebrate Christmas and not actually go to welcome Him, to not make His coming the centerpiece of our Christmas season just wouldn’t be the same.

His Peace <><

Deacon Dan  

Photo by Ciefo Creativity on Unsplash