de dendro, ummm arbor?
I’m botching a lot of linguistics here, but that seems fair for Christmas as a concept. We take a bunch of Pagan rituals and mash them together with Christianity and end up with a holiday that just so happens to almost coincide with the winter solstice and arguably not with what historians would agree is Jesus’ birthday. Personally, I think that’s fantastic. I like to enjoy the best of every culture. That was this country’s original directive, before, you know…
So I present to you the Christmas tree! The origins of which are hilarious when asking a Christian, because even in the context of doctrine, the explanations lack both consistency and general reason. But who cares?! It’s fun!
And so it was that during the holiday season of 2006, Liz wanted a tree for our janky little apartment. And with little money to afford such an extravagance, she decided upon a Martha Stewart variety, back when she was contracted with K-Mart. But no blue light special here. No – this thing was dang expensive!
Yet it wasn’t until 2013 that I can find a photo of it. In the era predating smartphones, I was much less likely to document everything, much less take the time to download photos off the camera. But here it is in a time when it possessed needles still.
And here it is in its final setup, 2024.
Over a decade’s worth of ornament collection has hidden the fact that it was almost completely see-through.
And so another era has ended, ingloriously dumped on the side of the road for unlimited trash pickup day, in its original box which was, at that point, more tape than cardboard.
So long tree! May you continue to clog vacuum hoses in decoration afterlife.
–Simon