Oh Christmas Tree…

I am so grateful to have had the company of my son and his girlfriend at Christmas.  They descended Christmas morning, bearing bags of gifts.  Photographs, food, coffee cups and smelly stuff.  And a tree.  In a cardboard box.

 

For the last couple of years we haven’t bothered with a christmas tree.  It seemed unnecessary after my son left home.  We can’t afford to participate in the orgy of debt that the season has come to represent.  Nor do we want to.  I have to admit that Christmas is a struggle for me in general.  I am not a christian, but I am a mother.  I am not a consumer, but it has become very difficult to find unbranded space in this new reality.  Especially at this time of year.

 

When I was a little girl, my Dad would take us up into the Sooke hills in his 4×4 to pick a Christmas tree.  We always had a white pine, because the fragrance is superior to any other species.  They grow in elevation, so it’s a long trip, with plenty of tight twisty roads.  There was always snow at the elevation where we found the trees.  That was not the case down in Victoria, where we lived.  Magical times, when I got to visit Dad’s environment.  We would see deer, ravens, eagles, grouse and partridge.  There was a japanese orange warming in my pocket.  Those were good times.

 

Years later, we snuck up into the same hills, on those same logging roads and poached ourselves a white pine sapling.  We felt entitled because my partner had planted them.  Thousands of trees in those hills he planted, every eight feet, up the hills and down the other side.  White Pine, Douglas Fir, Grandiose Fir, Western Red Cedar, Yellow Cedar, Spruce, Hemlock.  Until the Corporations got control of the Government.  After that it was all contracted out. No jobs, no social contract, no regulation.  They gated the roads.  First, it was only during fire season.  Then, all of a sudden, it was just forever.  Not only do you not have a job in your environment, but you can no longer recreate there.  Scrounging firewood, slate, camping, fishing and hunting.  These are my heritage, my people have survived by these methods for hundreds of years. 

 

So, to get back to my original story, my son bought the tree because he felt confident that we would not have one.  He was mistaken.  We had brought in a potted tree from my horticulture past.  Taxus Medea, English Yew.  It is a vertically challenged speciman like myself, and has been uprooted in the most undignified ways at times, in order to maintain stewardship.  It lost it’s mate and so berries are impossible.  A very slow growing species that has complex properties and valuable wood.  We have an indigenous species of Yew in BC., Western Yew, Taxus brevifolia.  We had gussied her up with a string of lights and some popcorn garland, which I cleverly punctuated with habanero peppers (why are my lips burning?).  I wanted to give him the christmas this year.  Instead, they gave it to me. 

 

Next year, if the universe co-operates, I will erect his plastic, made in China christmas tree in honour of his surviving a tour of duty in Kandahar.  After that, I will take him up to the hills that his Grandfathers carved and I will give thanks by planting a white pine or a yellow cedar.  We are supposed to be responsible for the stewardship of this planet.  Why are we sending my son to war?