Ours is not a culture ruled by ritual, but it’s fun to play out the few tattered traditions that remain, those that have hung on despite our penchant for utility and speed. In my experience, they are usually ghosts from a childhood of church-going, nostalgic reconstructions of the past or simply old habits dying hard. My family embarked on one this morning -- hunting for this year’s Christmas tree.
When I was very little, this was a whole day affair involving tractor rides up and down hills of differently spiked firs and pines. In later years, it was a heated argument between my brother and me over the pre-cut trees down by the lodge. We were supposed to alternate each year as to who made the final decision. But, without fail, we could never quite recall the outcome of the previous year. The debate would involve bribes, blackmail, hand-to-hand combat and the parent pity card. It would usually end in tears and one or both of us running off into the endless rows of trees. Today, we made a pact before we left to agree on something as fast as possible, regardless of quality. (What? We're busy!) So we chose a rather ungainly looking mammoth of a tree, fed it through one of those shrink-wrappers, bungee-chorded it to the car and had erected an eleven foot fraser fir in the middle of our living room in less than an hour.
I’m happy to carry on a tradition with pagan, Germanic roots. But it has evolved so far from its pre-Christian beginnings, when the purpose was to show tribute to the tree spirits, that the communing with nature aspect has all but disappeared. When people first started decorating trees, they were not cut down, but ornamented where they stood, so as to preserve their divine inhabitants. Many Scandinavian and Germanic rituals involved trees because the forest was the dominant element in their landscape and they relied heavily upon it for shelter and heat.
Unrelated to the solstice, Saturnalia or any other winter festival, the ancients also had the tradition of mounting an evergreen tree on top of a completed wooden structure. As the last beam was put into place, a tree would be hoisted up so that the spirits of all the timber involved would still have a place to occupy. This ceremony, called “topping out,” is cause for celebration for the workers and has also migrated to the States. I like to think of the tree towering over our couches as topping out the year.
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