On many of the streets in New York, Christmas tree vendors have taken root. There is usually a little hut, or a tarp, or at least a stool, and one of those tubes through which a full Christmas tree becomes entwined in plastic mesh. Some of the trees are open, some are already tightly tied, but always the smell is beautiful and green.
I'm now home for the week and as such I'm not in New York. Walking through the Christmas trees was a mix of sinful and useless desire to have one (yes, live trees are so wonderful, but no I wouldn't even be in the apartment on the holiday), and gratitude that I could have a home for a few seconds in the middle of so many, simply on my walk to work.
And now I'm sitting looking at our family tree. It is undisturbed by my brothers and I fighting to put our ornament on the highest branch, or arguing for color versus white lights (color won). It is a mishmash of various ornaments collected over the years, completed by my mother's love of fiber optics with a very tasteful angel on the top. There is the red string which has been on it as long as I can remember, the Nutcracker ornaments, and various other ones that don't even have a category in my mind, but are one with the memory of Christmas. I remember picking them out of the ornament box year after year and putting them on the tree without really thinking about their purpose or origin, the way children do, and they have remained that way for me, even now. They are themselves, without category or question.
I can't imagine a tree elsewhere, a Christmas decorated in another way. The season of advent has existed on the streets of New York until now, just as it has existed in many places. But now I'm home, with a familiar looking tree, and a beautiful fiber optic angel.
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