Trees For What Ails Ya

Christmas has sucked the life-blood from my soul. Today I drove in the snow to Dollar Tree for some affordable wrapping paper. It doesn't get any more Christmasy than that. The usually cheerfully polite Vancouverites are feeling it too. I sensed a slight tension in the air at Trader Joe's. No one was rude but people were just slightly less friendly than usual. My checker wouldn't make eye contact. Usually they ask me what I'm making for dinner that night. Then we discuss ingredients, especially if it's soup.

I nearly spilled the beans (not actual beans) at Fred Meyers and told a fellow shopper that I couldn't wait for Christmas to be over. Can you imagine? It would be like telling a relative at a big Catholic wedding reception that you don't believe in god. I did that once. I got the blank stare of incomprehension. I think it was because it was a grandpa of one of my cousins, and not a blood relative. I must have felt I could unburden myself for a moment.

But hate Christmas? That can never be said in public, during a sale. Only among your closest Bohemian friends (where it's a given) can you discuss your dislike of the holiday. I do like the Pagan elements (big surprise). Trees, lights, rum punch, eating rich, highly seasoned and fattening foods, giving presents to my child and to other children and having them rip them open and play with them heartily--that is good. The rest: enforced jolly times--bleh.

Here is my true love of winter: trees in snow. I used to sometimes visit trees in snow with my family during ski vacations, but I never lived next to trees in snow until moving here last year. And here they are--the stars of the season: home to squirrels, birds, bugs, lichen and moss. I can totally understand the sense of worship they have inspired over the millennium. Watching them throughout the year has been a true pleasure and watching Jackson hang ornaments on one in our living room makes me appreciate the traditional aspects of December a little more.

Here's the surrounding area of today. More snow due tomorrow, and the tomorrow after that, and the tomorrow...




Off to bed now...