My Christmas Tree Obsession

My Christmas joy lies buried in my many red and green, large, Martha Stewart tubs of ornaments. My ornament fetish began as a school girl in Hyderabad, India.

Next to my Protestant mission school was the shop of John Lee, a Chinese immigrant couturier. John Lee, having escaped Communist China, made tailored suits and custom shoes for men. At Christmas time he went full scale into Christmas decorations and sweets.

Mrs. Rodriguez, the Goan Portuguese, manager of the swankiest hotel in town, also pulled out all the stops, and this little corner of a Muslim and Hindu community turned into a colorful Christmas town.

Fruit cake, guava cheese, toffee, marzipan, and twinkling German Christmas ornaments, and strings of lights. The Max Mueller Bhavan, a German cultural embassy, added to the fervor with their Wassail and Stollen.

Every year my grandfather would come to school with his stick, threatening the principal that we were not to be converted. We weren’t converted but we sang Christmas carols with gusto. Christmas, like Hindu festivals, became embedded in my soul.

Moving to Salt Lake City for graduate school in 1973, Christmas time was pure joy. The Mormon tabernacle was all dressed up and Temple square turned into fairyland, with dancing sugar plums and the echoes of the tabernacle choir.

There in what we in graduate school called “Mormonville,” I developed my passion for collecting hand crafted ornaments, carved wooden elves, hand crocheted baby angels, Nutcracker ornaments, wooden trains. I was transported and transplanted and students brought me gingerbread cookies.

The problems in India were far away and the “festival” of Christmas, just like any Indian festival, gave me an anchor to connect to the new land that was soon to be my new home.

I was raised a Zoroastrian Parsi in India, and perhaps what the Zoroastrians are best known for are the Magi who followed a star to find the manger in those ancient times. I had found my manger — a small dorm room that I filled with Christmas trees and decorated with small and special ornaments.

These were living trees; small Norfolk Pines that could exist without ornaments and they continued to exude warmth into the warmer months and became comfort fodder. A tradition was born.

I would buy new individual ornaments and sets of ornaments every year after.

Through my thirty years of married life, Christmas joy lay in collecting ornaments and artificial trees, proliferating to six in our small home. My mother-in-law hated Christmas and the tackiness of plasticky — and non-plasticky — ornaments.

But suddenly the collecting of ornaments spread to her also. She loved to travel and often brought back an ornament souvenir from wherever she went. And so did we. Taking students overseas to London, I would bring back Alice’s wonderland to hang on my tree, or Henry the Eighth’s wives. There were Italian Murano clowns and too many sets of Nutcracker ornaments. Eventually, we put our preemie child into dance classes so that he could grow. Ballet became an obsession, too, as did the annual small American town Nutcracker that soon turned toxic.

As I clung to my trees and ornaments, the family began to fall apart. Many loved ones began to distance themselves from my particular form of Christmas joy. Maybe my trees and the joy they brought me in the deep dark winters scared them away?

Though abandoned, I still take joy in Christmas. We are both what no one I care for seems to want.

Over time, a deeper connection to the meaning of Christmas has grown in me. It is no longer merely something shiny and glittery. It is not just the birth of the baby Jesus that the western world celebrates.

For me, it is the hush of winter and the connection to myself, my solitariness, wherein tinsel pulls me towards the magnetic core of the Earth and uncovers a memory attached to each ornament. Each one, a marked moment in what was our familial existence. 

In this, my obsession with Christmas trees now comforts me. As I examine each ornament I remove from the boxes in a systematic order, each connects me back to particular memories. Particularly those of a son now lost to me.

But among the silence of the trees and the ornaments that don’t speak, and the many baby Jesus’ that hang, I expect a miracle.

Where is Santa Claus when I need him? What will old Saint Nick bring in his sack?

Each year, I light the way for him with paper luminarias, candles in paper bags — the tradition of my adopted New Mexican home. Each year hope is reborn as the Christ is born again.

---

Christmas is so much more than just a day for tearing through Christmas paper to reveal a coveted gift. It’s a time for peace, for remembrance, for hope for so many. As you experience this Christmas season, may you be filled with all the good things — and even as you remember the sad, may hope fill your lives. Merry Christmas!

• Gingerbreading – My Favorite Things
• Weaving Lace – Christmas Poem
• A Christmas Carol – My Favorite Things
• The Princess and the Pain – Christmas Fairy Tale
• Fireplace for Your Home – Christmas Essay
• Reindeer – Christmas Flash Fiction
• A Christmas Love – Poetry
• Yuletide – An Original Christmas Melody