Author Archives: Alan Ilagan

This is not a feel-good Christmas post.

If you’ve come here looking for holiday spirit or happiness, move along.

Seriously, keep going. Do not pause here. Do not read further. Come back another time. Closed.

Anyone who remains is going to get an earful of Christmas sass and a slap of cold hard truth.

When I was a kid, my favorite television episodes were those that had a holiday theme to them. Some tied in little variations of the Scrooge story, some threw in the birth of Jesus, some just made their usually-snarky villains experience a momentary reprieve from their evil ways – a softening and brief suspension of their otherwise-integral shit-stirring.

I loved these episodes because they made it seem like Christmas had the power to change an asshole from an asshole into a decent person. They made me believe that redemption was possible, that it was never too late to become “nice” and “good” and all that stuff. And for one shining sitcom/drama moment, maybe it was.

The funny thing about this televised version of Christmas, as well as the real-life commercialized extravaganza itself, is that for that one moment you start to believe that most of the world is good, that most people will, if given the choice, do the right thing. And it makes you feel good.

Then a day passes.

Then two.

Soon it’s New Year’s Day and all you do is make wishes for your own self, your own wants, your own resolutions and desires. You forget the good that Christmas briefly brought. You forget and you forget and all that is left is some dim memory of happiness that you will attempt to rekindle next year.

There are worse things, I suppose. But not after you realize what you’re doing. Not after you realize how it works, how hollow it all ends up being. Once you realize that, you are complicit and guilty of the game. That’s why some people have children, I imagine. To start it all over again. To try to make the good stick. To try to make the good into something real and lasting.

But it isn’t.

It wasn’t.

It never will be.

When I was a little boy, one of my favorite things to do in the days leading up to Christmas was to crawl beneath the Christmas tree when it was lit at night and look up into the branches. From this interior vantage point, I was both secretly concealed (I always liked to be hidden) and afforded views no one else had. I was within looking out, and that’s one of the best views to have.

Behind the thick exterior of pine needles, the inside area opened up. Where less light reached, a thinning of branches occurred. Foliage wise, the interior of a Christmas tree can be hollow. One could see clearly the beauty of the trunk, the architecture of the branches and the congealed rivulets of sap. One could follow in the footsteps of chipmunks and squirrels, tracing how they might climb and disperse to evade predators, or where they might hide their plunder. Illuminated by Christmas lights, the natural beauty of the tree found particular splendor. I stayed there, pondering the prettiness of the season, holding onto my childhood because I already knew that life would only get more difficult. 

The heart of a tree is a private place, and only in such secrecy could I be comfortable enough to show my pain.

This year I remembered the balm of being in the midst of such beauty.  On a night otherwise filled with sadness, I pulled a pillow from the couch and worked my way under the lower limbs of the tree. I looked up and into the branches closest to the trunk. This tree that I’d grown for fourteen years, this perfectly-imperfect piece of nature and wonder – it held its sharp needles tightly to itself, as dearly as I held onto childhood memories. 

No matter how old I get, there is still wonder and pain there. Here. 

Beneath the prickly boughs, salty gratitude and anger like the sea rolled over my face.

The journey that brought us to this year’s Christmas tree began about fourteen years ago. We had only been in our home for a short time and the front yard was still a barren wasteland devoid of character or anything other than standard yew and juniper fare. The lawn tumbled rather ungracefully to the street, so the main view one had when surveying things from the front door was an expanse of dark pavement. To break this up, I planted an island of three specimens: a Chinese dogwood, a Chamaecyparis, and a tiny foot-tall blue spruce. Between this and the street I planted a long row of Thuja ‘Steeplechase’ – about a dozen.

I knew the spruce would eventually outgrew the space, but it would take a while – at least a decade – and I couldn’t see that far ahead back then, so in it went. The first few years it stayed relatively small, with only a few new puffs of soft blue-gray needles appearing each spring. It also had enough room to develop a decent coniferous form. When it was about five or six, it was the perfect size for a strand or two of Christmas lights, so I ran an extension cord all the way down the lawn and lit it up.

Eventually though, as all babies and children do, it grew up. The neighboring dogwood had grown too, as had the Chamaecyparis (which I’d had to cut down a few years ago thanks to its size and unruliness). The blue spruce was reaching true Christmas-tree size. Whether utilized as such or not, it would need to be taken out. The dogwood was already bending its beautiful limbs around it, and where it refused to yield the spruce was making motions against its pretty form.

For the last two years, I’ve been promising to cut it down and bring it in for Christmas, but each time something came up. This year my co-worker Heath said he had a chainsaw (gas and oil-powered!) and could make quick work of cutting it down. Since it was about ten feet tall, I pruned off the lower branches, marked off a suitable place to cut, and had Heath over after work to make it all fall down. After planning and picturing it for years, the actual event was woefully anti-climactic. The mighty spruce was felled in a few seconds, and Heath leveled the stump at the ground. It was as if no spruce occupied the space for all those years. The tricks of time. The wonder of nature. The weight of the world.

We propped it up in the garage, where it lowered its boughs gloriously, seeming to expand before our eyes. It would require additional pruning to bring it to a manageable size, but it was, in my eyes, practically perfect. Proud as a parent and a peacock, I remembered how small it was when I planted it in our front yard. I thought of all it had seen – all the summers and springs and winters, all the guests and family and friends who had paraded by, all the games of hide and seek with my niece and nephew. It was a special tree, and it was getting a special send-off.

Draped with lights and decorations, it takes pride-of-place in our living room, scenting the whole house with its gloriously fresh pine fragrance – the perfume that only Christmas can conjure. So much lovelier than dismembering it into a bunch of brown lawn bags come the spring.

(Many thanks to Heath and his chainsaw for making it happen!)

By the time of this posting, we will have hopefully cut down our own Christmas tree this year (and by “we” I mean my co-worker Heath, who has a chainsaw that runs on gas and oil, as most of them do I’m told). This marks the first time “we” are cutting our own, but the blue spruce I planted about ten years ago is finally outgrowing its space and infringing on the form of a Chinese dogwood, so down it must go. I’d rather use it as our Christmas tree than simply dismember it, distributing its parts among lawn bags come spring.

To prepare for the cutting, I trimmed the lower branches, saving some of the boughs for this hearthside display you see here. Strung with a few holiday lights, it makes a simple yet effective Christmas scene, and brightens up an otherwise dim section of the family room. It works well with the brick, and the new leather couch, while adding that traditional Christmas tree scent that is so evocative of happy childhood memories. Such rustic elements are indicative of the coming winter, when subtle beauty – mostly textures and tints – takes the place of brighter, sunnier components.