This year I changed my Christmas tree. For several years now I have had a very elegant tree, all burgundy and gold. This year I went traditional.
I glue iridescence to the tips of pine cones, stringing them to the tree on red ribbon. I make cinnamon gingerbread men, with silver buttons and silver smiles. I pull red and green calico bows off the wreath my sister made for me one year and nestle them among the artificial needles of pine. I stitch a new tree skirt, one of unbleached muslin printed with holly leaves and berries.
I sit for two days, stringing popcorn and cranberries.
When I was a child, we always made popcorn strings for our tree. The light bulbs then on trees were large and, unlike my current set of twinkling white lights with the twelve settings of fade and run, colorful. The lights on my childhood trees were red, blue, yellow, and green. My mother lusted for some years after a metallic tree with a projector that rotated colors. Thankfully, we never had the money for one.
We would sit in the living room, my mother, sister, brother and I, and we would string popcorn. Carols played on the stereo and at some point my mother would make cocoa while I would argue with my brother over whether tinsel should be hung or thrown.
The popcorn breaks more easily than I remember. I separate the firm cranberries from those that have started to go soft. I double my thread, rolling the ends between my fingers to make a knot.
After I loop the popcorn strings branch to branch, I add the white ceramic sleigh bells with the red ceramic ribbons which I found in my mother's house after she died. Next, I hang the porcelain angels, one for each family member no longer with us. A name tag hangs down the angel's back, between her wings.
At the top of the tree, I place a red feathered cardinal. Wings spread wide as if caught in the moment before alighting, its crest glitters.
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Home Again.
Though the hour that tipped topped the sand in the glass that hung delicately above a warming fire place, was soon to spin itself over to start a new variable of time. Tick tock, whoosh.
The scent of early autumn permeating the air as the symphony of sounds from that days scavenger hunt, snapped in rhythm to the leaves that would burn softly.
Igniting the thin dried tree branches no bigger than a twindle of yarn coaxing the thicker bark to life. Their colors bursting from bright green to sunblazing orange. The vibrant nights chill would soon disappear into warmth from the blazing flames before them, enveloping the room of simple means.
A kettle on a frame for cooking, two twined wooden chairs so sturdy when first whittled. Now held balanced together with hay and wool, spun many times over to refinement. The proudest foot comforting rug lay cleaned, newly braided, with lush colors beneath the fastidiously woven pair of newlydarned woolen socks, completing that years Christmas gifts.
There were a few smaller objects such as a plate or two and a few utensils placed in order on the small side table that doubled as a ladder or stool. The windows were fashioned with the wool milled from the sheep they managed to grow into adults and who by Heavens grace were able to produce enough wool to supplement their humble means.
The family of sorts stayed on through many years and provided milk for nursing, wool for yarning and the companionship of an ancient relative who never aged a day in their lives. Simple living was key. Not necessary, not required or demanded or forced but by choice. The stirring of the evenings meal warmed to perfection, the metal spoon circled round and round provided a harmonious blend to that evening's longed for relaxing music as they sat by the hearth of the fire.
Winter would soon be here to greet wind and tail. The days labor, of boarding the windows, filling bags with sand for snow walking and the meat and food shed shined like a beacon for all the world to see and know.
No matter how far you go, home, is only one step back from wherever you are standing.
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