My Favorite Christmas Tree
My Favorite Christmas Tree
Cid K Fleming
Originally presented at First Christian Church of Freedom
November 19, 2022
When I was four, a friend of my parents asked me what holiday we celebrated, meaning Christmas or Hanukah.
“Halloween,” I replied.
It wasn’t that my parents were raising little pagans, but it’s accurate to say that I was raised with alternative religion. Many alternatives. The idea, as my dad explained, was that there were many options, and we were free to choose. We attended different churches and synagogues with friends and family, but did that mean we celebrated many different religious holidays? It did not. In fact, my parents didn’t celebrate any. No stockings hung by the chimney with care, no menorah, no Christmas tree. Holiday gatherings with my Jewish grandparents meant hiding under the table to gossip with my cousins. They meant tables laden with brisket and kasha, kugel and latkes. I didn’t attach religious meaning to these feasts.
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Despite this lack of traditional religious upbringing, my parents modeled the best of Judeo-Christian values. They gave generously of their time and resources to family, friends, and their community. They took on leadership roles in the various groups they were a part of. If something needed doing, my parents did it, and more likely than not, they would organize the effort. My mother worked in the school library and in her town library. She worked to bring war-injured Vietnamese children to the United States for treatment. My parents led the PTA at two of my three schools. My father was an advocate for a community-run nursing home in their small town. He drove men in recovery from their shelter to various appointments and to grocery shopping. He read books on tape for struggling readers and for students who were visually impaired. When I went off to college, my parents welcomed two young sisters, Iranian refugees, fleeing the coup. They welcomed a Baptist minister and his wife, who was undergoing cancer treatment in Boston. The list is endless, but the point is: It didn’t matter who you were, what your faith was, what your status in life was. My parents viewed everyone as equals.
“It is well with the man who deals generously and leads, who conducts his affairs with justice.” [Psalms 112:5]
These were my parents’ values. Generosity, leading in service, and working for justice.
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Still, around the holiday season, despite all their goodness and generosity, I begrudged my parents our lack of a shiny Christmas tree. We baked Christmas cookies for the all the neighbors, delivering them to houses adorned with stockings and trees with twinkling lights and tinsel. My mom cooked Christmas dinner for friends, who couldn’t go home for the holidays. We went Christmas caroling with friends, spreading cheer and affirming friendships.
We seemed to get into the “Christmas spirit”, so where was our tree? I didn’t yet appreciate that the holidays were about more than shiny trees. So, when my sister and I were strong enough, we decided to haul our mother’s Norfolk pine to my bedroom and decorate it. We would celebrate Christmas, damn it. Pooling our meager allowance money, we went to Woolworth’s, and bought bright red ornaments and tinsel. SO MUCH TINSEL! On Christmas morning, our little tree was resplendent in the morning sun, the tinsel casting blinding shards of light on the hot chocolate my sister and I enjoyed in our own private celebration. Maybe we exchanged presents, I don’t remember now; we probably spent all our allowance money on the tinsel. But we had our Christmas.
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Shortly after I graduated college, my father took me to a performance of Langston Hughes’ Black Nativity, a gospel Christmas celebration held, at the time, in Roxbury Massachusetts. My dad had lived and worked in Nigeria, and had always believed it was important for his daughters to know what it feels like to be “the other”, if only for a moment. He also adored gospel music and Langston Hughes, so this was as much enjoyment for him as it was a lesson for me. Sitting in the audience, I felt like a bleached spot on dark jeans. I was not Christian. I was not Black. But, the story that night was not about me. People had come to celebrate the story of Jesus. That evening, the story unfolded through orations and music and dance. Through it all, I heard nothing about shiny trees or tinsel or Christmas cookies. I heard a story about kindness and love. About family and faith. Having faith in yourself and in your community – and yes, faith in something bigger than yourself. Sitting amidst the crowd in both thrall and contemplation, I felt the sacred power of community, united in a spirit that felt bigger than me.
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When I met my husband, I could officially celebrate Christmas. My parents gave us gifts. They baked cookies and shared Christmas dinner at my in-laws or at our house, and they sat around the shiny Christmas tree I’d envisioned since childhood.
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When my Boston-born and raised father retired from his engineering career, he took up a new profession in his new country home: Christmas tree farmer. The man who didn’t know a rose from a geranium, bought himself a 1938 Ford tractor, planted fifty tiny spruce trees, and put up an official sign declaring his field a Christmas tree farm. The endeavor was more of a conversation piece than actual farming, but since he loved conversing more than anything, it was already a success. He didn’t water them – it rains, right? Nor did he fertilize them – the ground supplies nutrients, doesn’t it? And yet, he coaxed those saplings along, and a surprising number obliged by growing inch by hard-earned inch. His aim was never to make money, and he gave them away once they finally matured. To this day, I hear stories from friends who remember cutting their own from Jason’s farm, no doubt leaving with some of my mom’s cookies in addition to their tree.
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Not long after my dad started this Christmas tree-growing venture, my husband and I returned to our apartment after a long day of classes at grad school. In our foyer sat a scrawny little tree, along with a collection of branches and twigs and duct tape. Attached to the bundle was a note:
“Here’s a Christmas tree kit for you. Love, Daddy”
My husband and I carried the bundle to our living room and set the little tree in a tree stand, it’s slender trunk bolstered by dishtowels. We painstakingly taped the assorted branches and twigs to bald spots on the trunk. It lasted through Christmas. Barely. But of all the trees we’ve ever had, this one remains my favorite.
“A man who is kind benefits himself, but a cruel man hurts himself.” [Proverbs 11:17]
What benefit did my dad get out his kindness? Joy! A great gift, indeed.
It was my dad’s generosity, his humility, and – above all else – his joy that shone through each of those delicate twigs and branches taped to the slender trunk. And no other tree could ever hold so much love.