The Christmas tree is at once rudimentary and magical. Its genius lies in a simple trick of out-of-placeness—a tree in the house!—combined with an inviting blankness. From Back Story, our culture column
says Clark Griswold as the untethered branches of the family Christmas tree smash the windows of his living room; “lot of sap.” Soon the tree is ignited by a rogue cigar—though not before a cat has been electrocuted by its lights. A squirrel jumps out of the replacement tree, running amok and making a grandmother faint.
The Christmas tree is at once rudimentary and magical. Its genius lies in a simple trick of out-of-placeness—a tree in the house!—combined with an inviting blankness. To find meaning in a tree, you must suspend disbelief; and once you do, it can, like many popular rituals, mean whatever you want it to. The spruce donated every year by Oslo to London, and displayed in Trafalgar Square, conveys gratitude for wartime solidarity.
Private myths encircle individual trees like the rings inside a trunk. Each is a tribute to past, sometimes forgotten times and a bridge between now and then. Observing one in “The Christmas Tree”, Charles Dickens reflected on “the branches of the Christmas Tree of our own young Christmas days, by which we climbed to real life”. Amid the foliage “Christmas associations cluster thick”, Dickens wrote, including “the softened music in the night, ever unalterable”.
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