The Solstice Tree

The day after I quit my job I received a letter in the mail. ‘This letter is to inform you that as of 2.1.2008 your rent will increase from $1175 per month to $1325.’ It was straight forward and to the point. I felt the universe smirk. I nodded my acknowledgement and read on. The second page of the letter gave me the option for 6 or 12 months lease saving me 25 or 35 dollars a month. Gee thanks! I turned on my computer and went to Craigslist. I checked the rents of local apartments in my neighborhood and adjacent towns. I’ll be staying where I am.

I closed my computer, took another look at the letter and decided to go get a holiday tree; A solstice tree. A Christmas tree is fundamentally a secular (if not outrightly pagan) symbol co-opted and commercialized, like so many things, by our way of life. I have not had a tree of my own for several years. I’m not sure why I have one now. My tree (just so we are clear) honors the shortest day of the year. My tree recognizes something that is true for every single person on earth who seeks order and hope in a unimaginably large and complex universe of which we inhabit the tiniest speck. After the winter solstice the days will grow slowly longer and spring will soon push back the cold. Life will renew.

Of course, in my tree it is possible to see, if you like, a series of holy Crosses. Run your hands from the bottom to the top and think of the scales of a Christian fish… if you like. I see in the angles of edges of my solstice tree the Star of David and in the upturned branches the burning arms of a Menorah or a Kinara. As I water it early each morning and again after sunset each evening the I sense the fasting, thirst, heat and perspective of Ramadan and the eventual feasting of Eid ul Fitr. My solstice tree’s aroma fills my apartment like perfectly offered prayers lifted in the smoke of temple incense and through its bows and branches I can recognize the simple peace of a Shinto shrine. 

On every continent I’ve been on (including the European peninsula and the island of Australia) I’ve walked under similar trees. When I play the music loud and I’m dancing and singing I think about all the religions and beliefs past and future who are tied universally to the ebb and flow of seasons, to the cosmic workings of our planet and to what connects us beyond what divides us. I don’t see a fat man in a red suit or a baby in swaddling clothes. I don’t see a protected and fearful symbol, or a god-man, or a dogma. Instead I see a tree that smells nice, drinks allot and for today answers a question or two in my head and heart, and satisfies my need for order, focus and hope.

But this isn’t why I bought my solstice tree. I don’t really know why I got the solstice tree. I don’t have a sinister solstice agenda. Promise! When I went to get the tree right after reading about my rent increase I didn’t even have a vague idea why this was on my list of things to do. Sometimes you “just decide”. This was one of those “I just decided” moments. I suppose it could have been the Thanksgiving day hike I’d gone on a few days earlier in Sun Valley, Idaho with my brother Scott, his wife Anne and my niece Addy. On the way up the hill Scott mentioned coming into this section of wood and getting their tree this year. Later that weekend we had a discussion about gift giving, gratitude, forgiveness and family. Then I spent 12 hours in the silence of my own head driving home. Somewhere in there I think I made a tentative decision. Rental prices solidified the vague thinking and out the door I went to in search of my solstice tree. Impulsive.

A short drive and 37 bucks later I had a three foot tall fir bundled in the back seat of my car. The diameter of the trunk of my tree is approximately the size of a silver dollar. This means my tree really doesn’t need a stand so much as it needs a vase. I have a wide based glass wine decanter (Cost Plus $12.99 on sale) and with a bit of trimming of low branches and a knot or two I was able to plunge my solstice tree perfectly into place. I shook the tree once more turned it right side up and brought it inside. I found a spot for it in my living room between a hanging picture of Vietnamese fishing boats in Na Trang harbor at sunset and a dangling pair of another nieces, tattered point shoes.

Sometime over the next hour I realized why I bought the tree. Or rather, why it chose me. I decided, I “just decided” that this year I’m only putting presents under the tree for me. That’s right, only for me. It is completely and utterly selfish. But it seems right this year. What’s more…I realized the first gifts where already under the tree. The very first gift under the tree was the floor, or more correctly my $1325 a month home. It is warm, comforting, expensive and a place of sanctuary, joy, tears, meals, friends and protection. Gratitude (even at 1325 a month) showed up under my tree very unexpectedly and with it the holiday season began.

The second gift under my tree I discovered was the wine decanter acting as a tree stand. The gift, sobriety. I’m not talking necessarily about Spirits when I say sobriety. Instead this true sobriety is about the guts, fearlessness and courage to address the world with honesty and truth and then act on those convictions. That’s sobriety. En vino veritas? Perhaps. Wine certainly loosens the truth from our tongues, but true sobriety allows us to face ourselves in the morning and throughout the day and act with soul-felt conviction. True sobriety means we don’t hide from ourselves, don’t flinch at our reflection or draw back from what we know to be true.

I apologize if you expected something specially wrapped for you under my solistice tree. I know it seems selfish at this time of giving to think only about myself. But the season is just on its head this year and it calls for some out the wrapper and bows thinking. Do what I’m doing. You’ll save money. You'll realize the gifts are all around us, and you might just find it isn’t as selfish as you think.