Christmas trees

IN THE malls throughout the season I walked past platoons of Christmas trees or lingered before them to stare at their poise and poignant beauty, how they embody a piece of luxury and, bluntly, a measure of one’s worth in money. Every year these trees stand proudly, not only to say “buy me” but also to remind the child in me of his inherent capacity to dream.

I grew up in a simple house where Christmas was marked as splendidly as in the gated villages in the city. Our holiday decor was as vibrant, as bright, as those of the wealthy. Our joy was as real as those who, unlike us, had the means to buy an expensive Christmas tree.

My family never had pricey Christmas trees. Ours symbolized how we lived our lives in simplicity. My childhood memories always bring me back to the time when our holiday trees, though crude and cheap, were the fanciest and most fascinating in my very young eyes.

I was, I think, four years old when our Christmas tree was made of fallen twigs and chicken feathers from the public market. The snow-white feathers were wrapped around the twigs with white crepe paper, as though the feathers were the fallen branches’ original leaves. The tree stood sturdily in a soil-filled, Fiesta-size can of fruit cocktail.

It was perfect though it smelled of old wood and freshly slaughtered fowl. I was filled with extreme excitement that we would be having a life-sized Christmas tree where I could hang my father’s old sock—and dream shallow dreams. Through it, I could fantasize that Santa would drop in surreptitiously and leave a remote-controlled toy truck, ship, or train.

But like an old chicken, the feathery tree eventually lost its fluffiness after two or three Christmases. We never used it again.

I also remember a Christmas tree likewise made of twigs. But it was wrapped with green crepe paper, perhaps to give a semblance of life to the dead limbs, or, better yet, to embody fresh hope for the coming years. As usual, we decorated it with inexpensive tinsel and balls. We let it stand in an old, soil-filled can of paint.

But the green crepe paper faded quickly, and the tree fell into disuse.

Perhaps life became tougher. One Christmas we had a two-foot tree made of thin iron sheets. It was the cheapest in the public market, but it had an appeal. It went well with the metallic and bargain-basement tinsel and balls. It had its own stand, so we didn’t have to peg it in an old can.

I was young then, but I knew it was a sign that we had survived another year. I felt even then that our tree symbolized how difficult life was but that as in past Christmases, we would get through. But because we stored it in a big plastic bag, it became rusty. And so we bid goodbye to it.

The abaca tree made a mark on me. My parents used to do bible studies and volunteer work for the inmates in the provincial jail, and Christmas tree making was one of the livelihood activities there. My parents bought this green, six-foot abaca tree that had hooks at the tip of each branch from which the Christmas balls and tinsel could be hung.

Perhaps my mother thought then that the abaca tree looked quite majestic. She adorned it with lights and a few expensive balls. It stood for about three Christmases, and it made us feel that though life was still tough, with faith we would survive.

But dust and natural deterioration eventually owned that tree, and so we did not use it again.

I remember my father buying a cheap replica of the big Christmas trees being sold in the malls. I remember my mother decorating and transforming a synthetic bamboo tree into a legitimate Christmas tree. I can clearly remember each and every tree that filled the empty corner of our house during Christmas seasons, and I will not forget that there were years when we did not have one.

Whether we had a tree or not, Christmas trees taught me a single lesson: to never stop chasing dreams so that someday, I can fill a corner of our house with a tree that looks pricey not only because it actually is but also because our house, through all these years, has always been home to me.

Kristoffer Gabriel L. Madrid, 27, a lawyer from Oriental Mindoro, wishes his kababayan well after the onslaught of Typhoon “Nona.”