Christmas Joy

There are many cities, large and small, that put up city Christmas trees every December. It is very sad to watch a tree, chosen for its perfection and size, hoisted in the air without its lifeline roots and placed, dead, for its last month on earth.

Wouldn’t it show more reverence to these “temporary” trees if a site were selected to place a promising young tree for its whole life, to be decorated, not by trinkets, but by birds and their nests? It seems to me that such a tree would have a great deal to say to the people who look at it the year ‘round. Its live decorations of birds would be a new experience for city children who have never seen birds. And the growth of the tree over the years should bring happy memories of its young life, especially to those of the people who had seen its planting many years ago.

It came as a great surprise to me as a librarian in a fairly small town close to San Francisco that several of the people I either worked with or helped as library users had never looked up in the sky to see the sun or the stars. As mothers of young children, what clue does that give you as to their ability to teach their children almost anything? And how would many of the people who like Christmas trees have any idea of what we could do to revere our trees without killing them?

ARW
12/2/09