Christmas lines the Sidewalks

Walking to work today, I noticed the amount of Christmas trees on the sidewalks. I hadn't really considered before how people got rid of them, and it makes sense that someone in the city would come around and pick them up, but seeing them covering sidewalks, some still hanging onto decorations like children clinging to their mother's hands made it real. Christmas is over. They looked forlorn, all the douglas firs and winters and other trees that brought greenery and scent and sight to apartments all over the city, that made former tiny apartments feel like home.

Christmas tree farming is an art that fascinates me. Imagine most of your year's profit, if not all, being based on a Christian holiday celebrating the birth of a baby who would change the world around him. IMagine checking the trees all year, having to be concerned about too much rain or too much sun, waiting for November when, with the first snows falling, you could choose the trees to harvest. I'm not sure I could do something so unreliable. What if a year came when more people bought fake trees than real? I did this year, after swearing for multiple years that I would never have a fake tree. Of course, I'm not even sure my ceilings are high enough to warrant a real tree. So I went with a really cheap fake from Metrodrugs that literally changed how I felt about coming home at night. The Christmas tree is, I believe, the best of pagan symbols we stole God knows when. It's a way of sharing your excitement of the season with your friends and neighbors.

So we spend a fortune picking out the perfect tree, time setting it up and decorating it, putting presents under it, letting the fragrance fill the air, and then, after Christmas, it's just thrown out in the streets- literally. At my parents home, we always took the tree down a little afte rthe New Year and pulled it out into the woods for birds to nest in. It was a way of saying good-bye to the season while welcoming in the winter birds that spend their time eating our birdseed and hopping around my dog Coco driving her insane as she tries to control "her" yard.

The upside of walking to work amongst the trees? I spent the whole way drifiting along in the heavenly fragrance of what is leftover from Christmas.