Timing is Everything
by Stephanie Piper
I have three requirements for Christmas trees. They must be large. They must be lush. And they must be late.
Well, late by Southern standards. Here, where the season begins the day after Halloween, my decorating timetable marks me indelibly as a Yankee.
Our tree goes up on Christmas Eve, a tradition dating from my New York childhood. Back then, the weeks between Thanksgiving and December 24th were devoted to the lost art of waiting. In the church year, it's the season of Advent. Advent means arrival. First, though, there's the journey.
It's a slow march through the winter darkness, punctuated at weekly intervals by the lighting of another candle on a wreath. Three candles are somber purple. One is rose-colored, a reminder of approaching joy. Veni, Domine Jesu, we sang each icy December Sunday, et noli tardare. Do not delay.
But delay was the point, a test of patience as the neighbors' colored lights came on and canned carols boomed through Murray's Five and Ten downtown. My friends' trees were already in place, trimmed and sparkling. At our house, there was a creche on the front hall table and a wreath on the front door. No evergreen towered in our front window, and every query about it received the same reply. Wait.
When I was very young, we spent Christmas at my grandmother's house. We arrived on Christmas Eve along with the aunts and uncles and assorted babies and crowded into the tiny, immaculate bedrooms upstairs. Below, there were no hints. The sun parlor wore its usual air of pristine order. My sister and I huddled in a four-poster bed and chanted our annual mantra: we'll-never-get-to-sleep.
We weren't allowed to get up until the bells rang in Trinity Church across the street. Then we clustered at the top of the stairs for one more spell of waiting. Finally, from the darkness through the banisters, we saw the faint glow.
The sun parlor was filled with a giant, fragrant tree trimmed in blue and silver. It dwarfed the velvet settees and carved endtables and cast its shimmering light over the faded Oriental carpet. It had come out of nowhere, soundlessly, invisibly, overnight. It had come while we waited.
The Christmas I was 11, my younger brother was gravely ill. The doctors had done all they could. Now, they told my parents, we must wait and see.
We waited, my sister and I, for my mother to return from the hospital each evening. We waited in the upstairs hall, listening while my father spoke to the doctor on the phone. We waited to hear if my brother could come home for Christmas. In the end, the doctor agreed, reluctantly.
My brother came home on Christmas Eve, carried up the front walk and placed gently on the living room sofa. Behind him came the Christmas tree, a fresh-cut spruce that brushed the top of our 16-foot ceiling. He lay pale and still as we started the trimming, our voices hushed. Then my mother cried out.
There's a bird's nest here, she said. There's a perfect nest on this branch. My brother raised his head and looked, and my mother held the nest in her hands. It's good luck, she said, and my brother smiled at her, and at us, and at the tree. We had waited. Now, we saw.
We talk sometimes about revising the schedule, putting up the tree a week ahead, falling in step with local custom. The response from our far-flung children sounds a familiar note. Wait, they say. Wait for us.
So we do, lighting the weekly candles and watching the evenings draw in. On Christmas Eve, we go together to choose a large, lush tree. We string it with white lights and ornaments and remember the old stories, about the church bells and the blue and silver miracle and the bird's nest.
And it's late, very late, before the final angel is placed on the top branch. It's late, but it's right on time.
December 21, 2000 * Vol. 10, No. 51
© 2000 Metro Pulse
| 
