First, an admission: I am not putting up a tree this year.

Once again, it’s that time of year when everything shifts to red and green. A mixed feeling seems to be housed in the hearts of many adults, while children, by and large, celebrate with abundance. For a long time I was one of those with mixed feelings.

Growing up where it was grey and rainy with never a flake of snow, I felt like the songs and merriness weren’t about where we lived. Did Santa even visit places that didn’t look like storybooks? When my parents started a tradition of going to the sun for the holidays, we seemed even more divorced from the season.

That was around the same time I started going to Catholic school, as an Episcopalian. Laugh if you wish, clearly they are hardly that different from where we sit today, but at the time, we were not allowed to attend certain classes. Non-Catholics’ sense of other-ness was defined from the start. (That said, in boarding school, I always thought we got the better end of the stick with an amazing World Religions class that planted enduring seeds for me.) This was the beginning of my Catholic-with-a big-C skepticism that would remain. Something I grew to know well after marrying into a Catholic family and being forced into considerable vetting in order for us to be married in the church—otherwise known as my high school chapel—involving meeting multiple times with the priest, a psychologist, Meyers Briggs testing, and an Engaged Encounter weekend.

The holidays with children change things. It’s almost as if Christmas is their first marketing hit, the decorations speaking directly to them. Yet there is undeniable sparkle in the air that an incurable romantic like me cannot avoid, nor would I wish to.

What I struggled with, rather early on, was how to explain the fact that there was no One True Path to salvation, if you will, and how to explain the strange cult of Santa. G was a bullshit detector from the get-go and could read me like a book, but what she didn’t understand was why so many of her kind believed in Santa.

I talked about Santa being synonymous with love. I talked about the original story of Christmas. And I talked about other faiths. On my side, it was tough going. I can’t say I aced this ever, and of course, it recurred each year for a while. Until it didn’t.

She made me get at some essential truths, and she made me look things from a child’s perspective. I remembered the men playing Santa from my own childhood, as well as the way my parents played the mystery. But then again, my family was made of professional secret keepers. (Some deciphering work still ongoing, all of these years later.)

*

G’s holidays always have included snow or the possibility thereof. She remembers going out into the wilds of New England to get our own tree, when we were still a family. Years later, she remembers us blasphemously getting one from Walmart, just the two of us, when X’s and my marriage was faltering—and our shared delight in doing so.

And she remembers well the classic Waldorf school holiday fair we attended (for a short while we helped run a small part of it). Our favorite photo of each other together was taken there, long long ago, on one of our first big girl adventures. She remembers baking cookies and making wreaths for the neighborhood homes. She remembers elaborate gingerbread houses, face painting, different crafts in various classrooms, the pocket lady, the huge line for making jump ropes, the heat from chili and tea.

For all of the challenges we endured in her teen chapters, it warms me from within to hear her reflect on these memories and to share them with her. This may be the dearest point of emergence, the shared memory, dusted and revisited. Maybe the little in her isn’t gone; maybe it’s masquerading as big. (I am speaking for myself, too – in so many ways I feel like I am more a little than a big; just trying to “get it” in this adult world.)

Soon after reflecting about this, we decided to try our hand at our own holiday fair. With two weeks lead time. Right. Easy. Caught up in the magic of memory, we seek and get the blessing of our two organizations—the fire department and the community foundation—and then hit the ground running. Soliciting. Decorating. Finding volunteers. Stirring up ideas. Noting our pet projects. For G it is making a gingerbread house the likes of her childhood dreams; for me it is pocket lady. (Well, for me it is also getting a giant teddy bear and a bounce house. Me, masquerading as big.)

G makes a font. She then makes signs and orders signs for the intersections because what we don’t have here is a centralized news source besides Facebook. HP can’t keep up with our ink usage. We distribute flyers all over the closest towns, and we find the enormous generosity of local business juxtaposed with the surprising generosity of many franchisees and the not-so-surprising “must ask corporate” from everyone else. No shock to anyone, but heart wrenching nonetheless. They consolidate, take the jobs away, take the businesses away, and have no fund for local charity? Obviously this is not entirely true, but like so many things, they put up a block. Their profits funnel elsewhere; their corporate decisions about where to give often do, too.

But the hearts of the local businesses! Bruised yet still standing. A dozen roses. A large sheet pizza. A porcelain ornament. Gift certificate after gift certificate. Kindness after kindness. Of course, there is kindness in the corporate spots, too. And regret. A lot of regret in their eyes. They recognize the irony.

For much of the past twenty years, events and fundraising have been a part of my life, to lesser or greater success. An insight from where I sit today is the value of events. I remember how we parents used to complain that events were so much work for relatively little financial return. Perhaps just tap a few donors and move along. But what do we remember? How many hours now have we discussed how the Waldorf fair did it, and could we get close? Remember this? Remember that? It was all in the marvel of the event, not in the dollars we spent or they received. It was in the receipt of experience, in the fairy dust of being present.

Another insight: fundraising for the fire department is a totally different ballgame. I joked to G, it’s like fundraising for god in a world where everyone believes in god. I have repeated this line many times since because it sings so true.

For the fire department? Sure… what do you need?

*

But the tree. The original point.

A while back, during the oh-so-fun teen years, I walked past a store in the Berkshires and fell in love with a tree. It was a fancy store and a seemingly fancy tree of what looked like just twigs and light. Just fairy lights. My favorite kind. I went home to the internet, started investigating, and found one in my price range. I almost wrote “I found my tree” which in fact it was, considering the scorn heaped upon it. (A scorn it in no way deserved.) To me it was perfect. I had it on a timer and when it lit up, it lit a place in my heart.

It made me think of how I addressed the question of the holiday season when G was small. Whether she heard or understood I really don’t know, but I wanted then and there for her to understand that there are different faiths of equal measure. I didn’t want her to wait to be the metaphorical Episcopalian in the Catholic school, turned away from catechism to find the great faiths of other lands and peoples. But how? Someone wiser than I was debating the same, and he shared the note he wrote to his kids.

The answer was light.

Light is the common, interfaith ingredient. Light and gifts and gratitude.

From my Santa letter to G, age 5:

Absolutely everyone throughout the world loves light and gifts! Whether we’re Muslims observing Eid-Al-Adha, Hindus honoring Diwali, Africans celebrating Kwanzaa, Christians worshiping Christmas, Jews commemorating Hanukkah, Chinese giving thanks for Dong Zhi, or the many who recognize Winter Solstice. In each of these celebrations, there are gifts and light in a dark time of year. Maybe you will learn about all of them some day. Your soul is full of light and gifts all by itself. https://whereiendandshebegins.com/2007/12/24/love-santa/

I felt like my little tree represented everything good in the season throughout the world.

*

A few years went by, little light tree went in the back room for many moons and then back again to lighten my evenings during the darkest times. Then it was time for change. Little light tree when into a storage unit, and eventually I began to parse my things. How badly did I want to live in Manhattan? Enough to keep ____? The answer was always: I want to live in Manhattan, it can go.

This is how little light tree wound up moving to a friend’s beautiful healing space, and I moved along without it. She liked it so much that a few more joined little light tree. It was in good company.

I moved to Manhattan. And then I moved to Ohio during Covid. With all of my earthly things in storage on the altar (you begin to see how I find all of this somewhat amusing), our grey couch was the only piece of furniture in the rented apartment’s living room. It felt empty and sad. Similarly I knew no one and felt quite alone. It was very different from the Berkshires in many ways, but the loneliness was familiar. As the days grew shorter, I suddenly thought of little light tree, and asked myself: are you really going to consider buying it again? My hesitation didn’t last long. Soon, little light tree was back, next to the same grey couch, and something in my heart did a happy shift. On zoom calls, sometimes I would adjust the camera to share her light with others.

Typically I am the person who takes down holiday décor on December 26^th. Done. Over. Clean up. Ready for the fresh cleansing winds of January. For snow and retreat. For wintering.

But last year, I thought: most people wait until Epiphany, right? Let’s wait until then.

Soon it will be Valentines. Maybe I will put hearts on her branches. I zip delightedly off to Joanns to get red felt and ribbon. I am still, really, a little.

Soon it will be St Patrick’s. Maybe I will put shamrocks on her branches. (Green felt, ribbon)

Soon it will be Easter. (Oooohhhh on St. Patrick’s I saw those glitter Easter eggs – they would look amazing on little light tree.)

Soon it will be…? What? My friends laughed. What will you do now, Cressey?

I wandered the aisles of Joanns in my mind. Soon it will be Spring and Summer. Blossoming time. (Little white blossoms and florist wire.) This took considerably more work, and I really loved the outcome. It stayed. And stayed. And stayed.

Here in Wellsville there is an amazing antique mart where I find things from my childhood every time I visit. My lunch box. My mom’s trays. A Sparky Schulz book. Even sheets from my childhood bed! The last time I was there I found angels with hearts and an old wooden box for chocolates. I laughed as I brought them home: a box of angels. Life is a box of angels.

The day after Thanksgiving I took the box down from above the mantle, took out the angels and put them on little light tree. A few weeks later I removed the painstakingly placed blossoms just as the Michaelmas daisies faded from the fields.

If you were here, that is what you would see. Light and angels.

(And near it, a pocket lady cloak for our Holiday Fair on Saturday. All the while, G works into the wee hours of the morning on her gingerbread house.)

*

I am not putting up a tree this year, because it never came down.

As I think on this, I realize how little light tree speaks to so much. To the past, to the present, to my attempts to explain, to learning to do things that bring me joy, to the universal values of light and gratitude throughout space and time.

And to my sense of faith that burns bright or dim depending on the day, but stays steadily on, come what may.

May it be a glorious season of light for all.