A Christmas Tree to Remember;..

 It's been six years since we've posted on this page, so why start again now?

As it turns out, the name of the blog was a prescient one, and now nine years after its start, we are on the cusp of a move back to Budapest. Only this time, we're not going for a temporary stay of four or five months, as we did in 2011, 2014, and 2019... We're making what we're calling a "career move" with a new job, new partners, and a lot to say goodbye to in Michigan, where we have lived since 2002. 

The image of bridges is one that keeps coming up for us, and of the necessary uprooting on one side of the bridge to prepare for the new rooting that will have to take place on the other. A part of this uprooting for me is the attention I have been paying this past summer and fall to the things I love about our house and neighborhood. Today is the day in Hungary when they celebrate St. Mikulás and his gift-giving, and I was pondering our Christmas tree, so I wrote a short piece to reflect on and remember the privilege of friendships that its decorations represent. 

What I see when I look closely at our Christmas tree…

People in our neighborhood put up Christmas decorations and lit Christmas trees earlier than usual this year. Maybe because of nicer than usual weather, maybe because of so much pandemic time spent at home, I don’t know.  

We picked up our Fraser Fir on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, taking advantage of a warm sunny November day, and our newly-back-intact family for the holiday break. And that night we decorated it together. And as usual we started with lots of energy, with Bruce Cockburn’s 1993 Christmas album reminding us of “Huron Carol,” and “Early on One Christmas Morn,” some of our favorites. And as usual, our energy slowly ran out before all of the ornaments were up, and our stalwart finisher, Julie, took care of the final touches. Now I’ve been admiring it for over a week, and I’ve been taking special note this year because it’s been two years since we’ve had it up and decorated (we were still in Hungary until Christmas last year and never got the decorations out..), and because we don’t know when we will get them out again – with an imminent “career move” to Budapest on our close horizon, it may be some years before we do this again. And I want to remember with some detail.

So here is what I see when I look closely at this tree in our living room at 852 Calvin Avenue. I see the paper angel at the top, a gift in the early ‘90s from our crafty RD friend at Calvin, Linda Boney Brandenstein. I see a white sombrero ornament from a market I can still remember in the summer of 1987 in downtown Mexico City. I see another hat ornament next to that one, a tiny Kyrgyz felt hat given to us while at the University of Michigan by a visiting scholar from Kyrgyzstan about twenty years ago, along with a gorgeous Kyrgyz “dreamcatcher” type ornament she also gave us. I see another sombrero from Mexico, this one a bigger mini-Mariachi hat, also from CDMX. I see about twenty painted tin ornaments from the Balderas artisans market in Mexico City, souvenirs from Julie’s and my year in Mexico in 1993-94. I see a wooden moose ornament from Silverton, Colorado, one of my favorites because of the memories I have of many trips to southwestern Colorado over the years. I see a white clay ornament that was a reminder to the Neland church community about a dozen years ago after our pastor led us through an insightful preaching series on the different images in scripture of God’s Holy Spirit – images of the dove, the down payment, the seal, the fire, and the wind. I see multiple clay ornaments, crafted and fired by Julie’s mom’s cousin Lucille, who died earlier this year – a teacher and an artist. Her ornaments say “Rejoice!” “O Holy Night,” and “Noel.” I see the Mary Engelbreit ornament with the child with arms wide open declaring “I love Christmas,” with wrapping and lights and opened packages all around – a classic. I see a glittery fish with colorful scales, a gift from our friend in Massachusetts Valerie McCoy when Bastian was born there in 1995. I see Hungarian felt ornaments, a rooster, a pillow, a star, and a heart that says “Budapest” inside a classic Hungarian flower design. I see a Petoskey stone in the shape of a mitten, a tribute to one of our favorite places to visit friends in northern Michigan. The word “Peace” appears over and over again in clay, silver, wood, and glass. I see several ornaments made from rings cut from Romanian trees beautifully decorated with wood-burned images and sayings from the Advent and Christmas tradition – “Silent Night,” “Merry Christmas from Romania,” “The light shineth in the darkness,” and more – we love these designs from the talented Maf Adrian in partnership with our friends Brandi and Dana Bates. I see an ornament from The Huss Project in Three Rivers, with the word “Imagine” stamped on a clay circle reminding me of creative positive energy that stands with people and community. I see my kids’ faces in ornaments they made at school or church, one of my favorites is Abi as a “little lamb” at Ann Arbor CRC around 2001. I see paper cut into ribbons and fashioned into colorful shapes that we bought at the Christmas market in Krakow, Poland, and I see a colorful painted wooden egg gifted to us from Jeffrey and Lisa Schra from Vienna. I see a gorgeous flower shape made up of wood and amber, a gift from Chris and Steve Van Zanen in Lithuania, and I see wooden maple leaf that came on the bottle of home-tapped maple syrup gifted to us by church friends, the Uitvlugts. I see plain shiny gold balls that are losing their lustre but we put them up anyway, at least the ones that haven’t broken yet, and I see pewter gifts from our wedding thirty-one years ago, some from Wendell August Forge in Grove City, Pennsylvania, where we met. I see the little green Mexican doll that was the recuerdo gift at our friend Sarai’s quinceaños in 2007, where I was privileged to offer a short blessing at her party. A colorful cross I bought at a Nicaraguan market in 2006 is up there, as is a full-sized replica of a s’more, which may have been a family gift some years ago. Lots of sheep ornaments are up there too. And there is the beautiful poinsettia ornament I bought at the Talavera factory store in Puebla, Mexico in 2007, (which we still refer to as the “Oh S***!” ornament because that’s what I said as I dropped it to the floor as I unpackaged it after carefully carrying it all the way home from Mexico…) There are more. So many more. The vintage Matchbox car ornaments, the glass hard candy ornaments, the electrical plug-in ornament the kids used to fight over who got to plug it into the string of lights, with a santa, an elf, and a reindeer in bumper cars forever darting about noisily in a circle. There’s a hot pepper from the Neland chili cook-off in 2013; a green and red beaded Hungarian shield; and a colorful red and green metal mushroom we bought at the Christmas market in Debrecen, Hungary in 2011. 

These images serve as reminders, of a big story remembered year after year, and also of the many stories of lives that have intersected around that big story – lives of friendship, adventure, humor, care, comfort, protection, preparation, and love. I am grateful for these beautiful images, and for this reformed pagan tradition that now points to hope, love, peace, and joy. 

One of my favorite Christmas poems is about a Christmas tree, by Madeline L’Engle.

Tree at Christmas

The children say the tree must reach the ceiling,

And so it does, angel on topmost branch,

Candy canes and golden globes and silver chains,

Trumpets that toot, and birds with feathered tails.

Each year we say, each year we fully mean;

“This is the loveliest tree of all.”  This tree

Bedecked with love and tinsel reaches heaven.

A pagan throwback may have brought it here

Into our room, and yet these decked-out boughs

Can represent those other trees, the one

Through which we fell in pride, when Eve forgot

That freedom is man’s freedom to obey

And to adore, not to replace the light

With disobedient darkness and self-will.

On Twelfth Night when we strip the tree

And see its branches bare and winter cold

Outside the comfortable room, the tree

Is then the tree on which all darkness hanged,

Completing the betrayal that began

With that first stolen fruit.  And then, O God,

This is the tree that Simon bore uphill,

This is the tree that held all love and life.

Forgive us, Lord, forgive us for that tree.

But now, still decked, bedecked, in joy arrayed

For these great days of Christmas thanks and song.

This is the tree that lights our faltering way,

For when man’s first and proud rebellious act

Had reached its nadir on that hill of skulls

These shining, glimmering boughs remind us that

The knowledge that we stole was freely given

And we were sent the spirit’s radiant strength

That we might know all things.  We grasp for truth

And lose it till it comes to us by love.

The glory of Lebanon shines on this Christmas tree,

The children say the tree must reach the ceiling,

And so it does: for me the tree has grown so high 

It pierces through the vast and star-filled sky.

Madeline L’Engle