Originally published in the Custer County Chronicle on December 4, 2024
We cut our Christmas tree over the weekend, a cherished tradition that ushers in the Christmas season, and which brings more delight, not less, the older I get.
As we decorated the tree, the various ornaments brought to mind family members and friends, special occasions or notable years. “Our first Christmas as Mr. and Mrs.” Wooden disks with music notes burned into them from my sister. The yarn ball ornaments that an aunt brought back from her travels in South America, and an adobe Nativity ornament. The little stocking with “Brad” written down the front. There are dozens of tiny brass bells from our wedding—our kissing bells. Lace-like snowflakes remind me of the crocheted ones that hung on the tree in the sanctuary at the Little White Church as far back as I can remember, back when my grandparents were alive and we all went to the candlelight service together.
Each year of adulthood, and more so since getting married, it is the little things come to mind, always the little things, seemingly insignificant threads in the celebratory tapestry. And it is the little things more than ever.
Our cultural observance of Christmas tends to get lost in a sea of haphazard attempts to create meaning and artificially bolster the spirits, with a full schedule that empties us, a helter-skelter array of engagements and efforts that lack real significance, parties and shopping sprees and things meant to create memories but become part of a holiday muddle that everyone is relieved to see end, if not on December 26th, then for sure by January 1. Christmas becomes nothing more than a consumeristic free-for-all, spending money we don’t have for gifts no one needs trying to create a happiness no one really feels. What has fallen by the wayside or out of fashion or favor are those traditions and rituals that effortlessly made up the Christmas season, things that you did because your parents did them, because their parents did them. The repetition through the years is what creates the beautiful memories, not the novelty of them, not the monetary value or the social capital.
It is the little things, more than ever.
The cherished recipes, like the pfeffernusse my Grandma made, now a staple in my Christmas baking and gifting, a tin of which was passed around the long wooden table after every meal at Christmastime.
The old-fashioned heirlooms, like the Fontanini creche that was my Grandma’s, identical to the one my mom had when I was growing up, and is now a treasure in my home.
The rituals, like watching It’s a Wonderful Life, the first movie my now husband and I ever watched together, or observing Advent, through devotional readings and lighting candles and special services at church.
The music, like the beloved carols and hymns, or the Mannheim Steamroller CD that we listened to a million times growing up. I found a used one last month, the same album, and listening to it takes me back to my teenage years, and the 1000-mile Christmas drive to visit my grandparents here in the Hills, crammed like sardines into our minivan, finally coming to rest at the top of a ponderosa-covered hill, where sat my grandparents’ rustic home. I can still see Grandma waving from the deck as we tumbled out of the van, I can see the lights wrapped around the railings and banisters, and can hear the precious, rather electronic-sounding carols from the bells hung above the door. And I can still hear Grandpa’s signature, “Hello, old scout!”
The simple expressions of love, like the brown paper packages tied up with strings, humble gifts tucked beneath the boughs of the tree, handmade, practical, heartfelt.
The fellowship and worship, like sitting in the glow of 100 little candles on Christmas Eve, feeling their soft warmth, gently singing “Silent Night” with 99 other voices, and being transported to a dozen other candlelight services over the years, recalling faces now absent, hearing voices long silent, feeling the shoulder-to-shoulder comfort of long drives in the dark before finding ourselves in the brightness of a celebratory church.
Those things – the trees, the favorite foods or the cherished decorations, the music, the celebration and the memorialization – mingle to create a wholeness this time of the year, and continuity from year to year. They aren’t novel, they aren’t new or unique, but those things can’t be replaced, because it isn’t about the things themselves, but how they connect us to our families here and gone, to our communities and churches, and ultimately how they draw our minds and hearts to the meaning of the Christmas season.
Children are eager for Christmas morning, for obvious reasons, and would I think happily skip from now to Christmas Day. But age teaches you something. It teaches that it is the little things that give the meaning and the joy and the delight to the season, as to life itself. The little things, because they remind us, over and over again, of the true meaning, the Person to whom this season is owed, for Whom this season is celebrated. It is the little things, more than ever.
Song Dog Journal 