From the winter solstice to the spring equinox

We adopted our Christmas tree when a friend moved and offered us her mid-sized Norfolk pine. Our immediate previous Christmas tree had been a Norfolk pine that languished from inept care and, before that, last minute, spindly specimens that we felt sorry for, sitting unchosen in the Boy Scout tree sale. Several years ago, back almost before memory sets in, we actually cut down trees on a wooded patch we had access to. One year it was essentially two dimensional and another year it had been so enthusiastically shaped by its previous owners that there were no extending branches to hang homemade stars on.

 

As a child I always wept when well-meaning adults read the Hans Christian Anderson tale about the chosen Christmas tree, gorgeously adorned one day, abandoned on the trash heap the next. For this reason, I always delayed taking down the tree until it became a brown, shedding, terrifying fire hazard. In those days there were no families of goats advertising that they would really enjoy welcoming the new year by feasting on piles of spent fir trees.

 

I never felt that artificial trees were of interest, and the fad of live trees didn’t take either. What would you do with the poor burlap wrapped specimens, taken from their home, brought inside, underwatered, and then – added to a small patch of yard in the spring. Where would it thrive from January to April or May? And picture this: We would now have a forest of over sixty trees on a small city lot if we had gone that route,

 

So, three decades ago we put a few lights on a three-foot Norfolk pine, a lovely little green thing we would love at Christmas and nurture lovingly throughout the year. Only – that second part didn’t happen. I wasn’t adept at tending indoor trees. Yet, in spite of my lapses, it grew tall, a little spindly and brown, but It served us for many years. Alas, one year it reached the ceiling, and it had to go. 

 

That was the year my friend moved house and offered us her tree. A set of three, all in the same pot, very beautiful and full and green. She knew how to tend indoor trees.

 

Our little trinity of trees has flourished. It bears its lights bravely, sustains itself through my sporadic  attention, and beams brightly with over 100 lights from the solstice in December to the equinox in March.

 

I am enchanted with this source of winter light.  I rise early.  I come down in the darkness, flip the switch, and – Let there be light! Lights collaborate with two walls of windows and one wall of framed kid art. They reflect back to me, and  I am surrounded by light.

 

 I am blessed with lights shining in the darkness.