Finally! The Christmas tree and nativity are up.
The tree was cut a few weeks ago when snow still coated the ground. For the last five years or so, we have been harvesting our tree from the yard, where I planted a dozen Norway spruces a few years back. (The softer needled fir stands little chance against the deer outside our fence.) This year I cut a 13-year old tree (the biggest of the bunch). It needed to be trimmed not only to fit the space but get it up the stairs to our living room.
Mounting it on the stand, the first thing we do is to place a home-made angel with a toilet-paper-tube body on the top of the tree. We made this angel 44 years ago for our first Christmas tree (tied together pine branches stuck in a pot of rocks). It reminds us of our simple beginnings as a young married couple and helps us appreciate our current good fortune.
For the last few weeks we have been decorating the tree sporadically, but the real job comes when Juana starts creating the nativity or el Nacimento. Countless numbers of wrapped and delicate heirlooms are pulled from the attic and put aside to be revealed once the tree is decorated.
Our family mixes the Germanic Christmas tree tradition with that of the Spanish one concerning the birth of Jesus. But it is quite open as to its construction.
Ours has grown substantially over the year starting as a tiny table-top manger to one that requires a raised plywood platform and supporting boxes.
Juana takes a world view of it starting on one side of the tree in the snowy mountains, moving toward small towns along a river to large cities and finally to the barn and manger where Jesus was born.
She incorporates many natural elements into her design from tree burls, to pine and spruce cones, to other bits that interest her. It is a work of art and love.
And that is what makes it so special!
