Well here it is, Sunday, December 13, and we havent finished decorating our xmas tree yet. the main reason is that kevin and i wanted to decorate it together, but since we are currently on different schedules for work, we don't see each other very often and when we are together, one of us is usually asleep so obviously that doesn't leave much time for much of anything, let alone decorating a tree. even when we have our days off together, it still never manages to get finished. the other day i was sitting on my couch pondering about this and that, and i thought to myself "why am i even bothering, and making such a fuss over having this damn tree decorated?? we don't have kids or expected company to enjoy it, and we're both seeming to be pretty indifferent about it. we're not even christian, so we've got no legitimate reason to even bother." i told kevin this the other day and he said "well, yeah you're pretty much right, but it is kind of pretty to look at." of course i agreed with that, but mentioned that we only had just over a week before christmas and since we wouldnt even be spending much of christmas at our place, why shouldn't i just take it down now and save on my power bill?
so what do i do, as an Ignostic, as someone without children or company, as someone who doesn't even like materialistic corporate holidays? why should i put a tree up? what did other people do who have been in this situation, especially those who aren't christian? why do people even put trees up to begin with? do they know WHY they do it, or are they totally ignorant and just do it cuz it's what their parents did each year or because it's "fun?"
well, my eventual decision aside, i have been feeling a little down about all the holidays lately, because right now they are just so contrary in their capacity to be enjoyed as to when i was a kid, that they barely seem different from any other old day, except it guarantees me the ability to see at least one side of family. holidays just feel so boring and disappointing you know, like bad sex. you have all this buildup to something you know should be awesome and fun, then it just dissipates into nothing. it would seem this phase is normal for anyone who has a few gaping years between when they leave home, and when they settle down and have kids, right? or am i the only one totally over-thinking things as usual?
(By the way, here is what we know about the origin of the christmas tree, just in case you were wondering [courtesy of Wikipediaa]):
"According to Christian lore, the Christmas tree is associated with St Boniface and the German town of Geismar. Sometime in St Boniface's lifetime (c. 672-754) he cut down the tree of Thor in order to disprove the legitimacy of the Norse gods to the local German tribe. St. Boniface saw a fir tree growing in the roots of the old oak. Taking this as a sign of the Christian faith, he said "...let Christ be at the center of your households..." using the fir tree as a symbol of Christianity.
The tradition of the Christmas tree as it is today known is fairly young. It was established by Martin Luther as a Protestant counterpart for the Catholic Nativity scene. Luther established the Christmas tree as a symbol of the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden.
The custom of erecting a Christmas Tree can be historically traced to 16th century Northern Germany and Livonia (present-day Estonia and northern Latvia). According to the first documented uses of a Christmas tree in Estonia, in 1441, 1442, and 1514 the Brotherhood of the Blackheads erected a tree for the holidays in their brotherhood house in Reval (now Tallinn). At the last night of the celebrations leading up to the holidays, the tree was taken to the Town Hall Square where the members of the brotherhood danced around it. In 1584, the pastor and chronicler Balthasar Russow wrote of an established tradition of setting up a decorated spruce at the market square where the young men “went with a flock of maidens and women, first sang and danced there and then set the tree aflame”. In that period, the guilds started erecting Christmas trees in front of their guildhalls: Ingeborg Weber-Kellermann (Marburg professor of European ethnology) found a Bremen guild chronicle of 1570 which reports how a small tree was decorated with "apples, nuts, dates, pretzels and paper flowers" and erected in the guild-house, for the benefit of the guild members' children, who collected the dainties on Christmas Day." isn't that some interesting shit. now how many christians do you think know even a fraction of that? =)
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