Why The Christmas Tree?

Who got the big idea to flop a large, piney, sticky, natural air freshener in the middle of the living room? And whose idea was it to put lights and decorations on it? And I guess mainly, what the heck does this have to do with Christmas?

Like everything about Christmas, consumerism has changed the Christmas tree over the years. If you listen to the words of “I’ll Be Home For Christmas” in the older versions the lyrics are, “Please have snow and mistletoe and presents on the tree.” Nowadays we have presents UNDER the tree and half way across the living room floor to feed the greed that all our little future captains of industry will cut their corporate teeth on. It’s tough to put an X-Box or laptop or snowboard ON the tree. We can’t satisfy ourselves with the exchange of little gifts for Christmas any more. Those are for the stockings. And what’s up with THAT tradition? Socks? I bet Jesus never wore a pair. Even HE knew they don’t go well with sandals! But one tradition at a time…

I can think of only one thing having anything to do with Christmas on which the dollar value has dropped: the Christmas bonus. That’s if you still get it at all. So Christmas has become all about buying more presents, and more expensive presents with less money. It’s no wonder a lot of folks call it “Stressmas.” And if you go find the nearest Goth or Vampire kid to you, (check the mall or the 7-11), and ask what he/she thinks of Christmas they’ll tell you it’s the time of year when most suicides occur. That is AFTER they tell you, “Like, Dude, please, ‘the holidays?’ Force your religion down people’s throats much? Gall!”

Lo, my stereotypically fabricated lost soul doth returneth uth to the main point: What the heaven does a pine tree have to do with the birth of Jesus Christ? Do they even have evergreen trees in Bethlehem? I guess that’d be in your modern day Saudi Arabia. Though I’m not sure how modern they are. Things are just completely different in so many ways from the countries where we celebrate Christmas. Most people in Bethlehem, where Christmas started, are Muslim and may not have even seen a pine tree much less decorated one. I can’t speak for ALL Christmas celebrating nations but I know in Canada and the U.S. people sometimes get stoned BEFORE they commit adultery… things are just different.

Indeed, the wise men of the Christmas story brought to, “A child, a child, who shivered in the cold” gold, frankincense and myrrh. How wise were they really if none of them thought to bring that shivering child a blanket? But anyhoo, frankincense and myrrh are both resins. Dried tree sap from the Boswellia and Commiphora trees respectively. If you look at these trees they are both short, dry barked, bonsai-looking trees that almost look dead. They have little leaves but are mostly gnarly branches and bark. A far cry from the full, green Christmas tree!

That’s about the only link to the tree I can find in the Christmas story. And the star at the top of most of our trees is the one and only link I can find between the Christmas tree and the birth of Jesus. It’s supposed to represent the bright star that guided the not-so-wise men to Bethlehem. But then again, some folks put an angel at the top of their trees. I don’t see much connection here either. I KNOW Jesus was just a baby but I don’t remember any guardian angel. Hercules crushed two pythons when HE was a baby and he was the son of A god. Jesus was the son of THE God! It’d be a bit like sending Steve Urkel to guard Brock Lesnar. I suppose the angel on our trees MIGHT represent the angel that told Mary about the upcoming miracle birth, though, at the risk of sounding blasphemous, I dunno how wise THAT was either. I mean if a woman is going to have a baby, and her husband has never slept with her, a smart angel appears to Joseph before he starts hammering and nailing dudes all over Bethlehem that he feels suspicious about. Luckily, the Koran recognized the virgin birth so with Sharia law as it was, none of Mary and Joseph’s neighbours were picking up nice, aerodynamic stones every time they saw the pregnant woman and her husband who hadn’t “known” her. So aside from the virgin birth, there were other complications that made the birth of our Lord an event that really DID require something miraculous like an angel. But the angel appeared about 9 months before the blessed event so any angel traditions should really be going on in April I would think.

But these traditions seem to catch on, no matter how outrageous they may be, and develop lives of their own. Maybe the best thing written about Christmas I saw this year was by a lady writing in our local Victoria newspaper. She wrote something like, “Christmas is more and more about traditions and the traditions are less and less about Christmas.” It’s possible that in a few hundred years there will be no way to detect the Christian story of Jesus from the traditions of the Christmas season. In fact, it sometimes appears that people are trying really hard to make this happen.

Let’s have some fun, shall we? Let’s see if we can’t pull something random and meaningless out of thin air, (or wherever else random and meaningless things are pulled from), and start a tradition of our own. It can’t have a thing to do with the Christian celebration of a holiday or it won’t catch on. How about Easter for our trial run. Something that has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the celebration of the risen savior. Something totally unrelated. Somethi - - - Okay forget Easter, somebody beat us to the punch there.

Using Easter as our perfect model, let’s see if we can’t just conjure up an erratic behaviour that some curious kid will ask about in a few hundred years and everyone will have done it for so long they won’t even remember why. How about we take a big, giant Christmas… halibut… over to our neighbours’ house, the neighbour to the right we’ll say, and throw it raw but not live, through their living room window on December 24th. NO! On the 18th because the 8 looks a tiny bit like a halibut if you make one of the loops much bigger than the other. Hmmm… right away I see a few problems. Jesus was known to have fished on the sea of Galilee, right? Maybe not for halibut but remember the pine tree example. And I don’t know how big the people of Bethlehem were 2011 years ago on turkey dinners either. But once again, we’ll concentrate on the curious tradition at hand.

Also there was the feeding of the 5000 with loaves and fish. The song about Jesus telling his disciples that he will make them fishers of men. And that Jesus symbol you see on car bumpers and such. The Jesus fish just might be a halibut. Ever seen it? Well anyway, that was just our first attempt.

Let’s try again. Wear as much of the colour purple as you can and tickle senior citizens until they give you, ummmm, fruit! Don’t stop tickling until you get a banana, mango, or a grapefruit. Tomatoes, they’ll have to give you two. Potatoes are completely out. Uh-oh, what if the old folks start giving Christmas ticklers fruit cake? Then we’d be cross-traditioning! We can’t have that. It wouldn’t be long before people started to believe that this was where the whole fruit cake thing started. Instead of the actual truth: that somebody made the most disgusting thing they could, a cake unworthy to be called by that delicious name, for someone they hated like a boss or an in-law, but had to give a gift that appeared genuinely thoughtful.

Wow, this is not easy! Well if I’ve learned one thing in my travels it’s that if you want wild and whacky tradition that seems blissfully unrelated to what it’s attached to, you’re talking Japan. No contest. Have you ever seen sumo wrestling? Each match is usually over in just seconds but is preceded by so much pomp and circumstance you can actually see the wrestlers losing weight as they wait. Dance, dress, hairstyles, dirt, salt, swords, ropes, diapers, diet, blocks, seat cushions, rules, regulations, protocol… surely the Japanese are the world leaders! And I have it on good authority that it was all from a group of noblemen, after lots and lots of sake, saying, “How about we do THIS crazy thing? Yeah, yeah that’s good. That’s totally outrageous!”

So, I’ll take a little swig of Asahi Super Dry, summon the Japanese spirit of random action that is so desperately random that it often cannot accurately be called “creative,” that inspires manga, and hentai animators, fashion, cuisine, hairstyles, sex and many things in the country, and let’s GIVE ‘ER!

We’ll start by wearing a thongy, diapery thing. Women can wear an upside down one on top. If they choose. It’s like the manga/hentai option. When I was in Japan there was one thing CONSTANTLY on TV: cooking shows. The number one comic is about a sushi chef. The Japanese are obsessed with creating new foods. Unfortunately with a creativity constricted, strictly structured society, they have a habit of falling into old habits. Every “new” food they tried to invent seemed to me to have a raw egg broken over top of it. So we’ll use that. Let’s fill some big vats full of raw eggs and dive right in wearing our thongy diapers. We’ll have to create a word for them. Something Japanese sounding. Ummmm, hoki buttchee. We'll also need protective head and eye gear. And, what the hay, they'll be shaped like chicken heads and beaks. Called "cheekeenatama" So cover our bodies, cheekeenatama, and hoki buttchee completely with the raw egg. Then we get out of the vat and go to a large, oversized sushi-go-round, (like the ones that take the different sushi pieces around and around for you to choose), that takes us through a heated area that will slowly cook the eggs to our bodies. After we are fully cooked we spray our Christmas egg suits with green wasabi and red ketchup and, voila: spicy Christmas body omelet for everybody! And should we eat it with chopsticks? NAH, too predictable. We'll use bear claws! Once everybody has done if for hundreds of years I’m sure it won’t seem so strange. Trust me.

As for the Christmas tree, I read that medieval Christmas plays sometimes depicted the Adam and Eve story since Christmas Eve was also considered the feast day of Adam and Eve. The Garden of Eden was symbolized with a Paradise Tree hung with fruit. The plays were banned but people secretly celebrated with Paradise trees in their homes. There were also pyramids with candles on them, one for every member of the family. Eventually these were placed on the tree. And you can guess how it progressed from there.

But this could all be bunk. And the evergreen mystery remains unsolved for me. But I don’t care that much. Soon I’ll be enjoying wasabi body omelet every year. That’ll make me forget all about Christmas trees. And probably everyone else. No less chance of happening than any OTHER tradition really. The way I see it.