Deck the Halls, Movies and Neighbors with Keyboards

This week I preformed the pagan ritual of bring evergreens in the house to decorate for the holidays. I say that tongue-in-cheek because, ya, I know, Christian churches use boughs and holly in their houses of worship so how can doing so be a pagan ritual? It just was before early Christian leaders tried without success to stamp out the practice that pagans believed would repel evil spirits, witches and ghosts from coming inside from the cold. Having failed at that then early Christian leaders tried with success to convert the idea to a Christian symbol. Oh, yes, a great and powerful metaphor was born that turned the boughs of evergreens and holly into a symbol for eternal life after death. But even as late as the 3^rd century holiday trees and evergreen boughs in the house were strictly forbidden by the church and aren’t we all glad they did an about face somewhere in the tumultuous pages of history. Although it's important to note that it was the publication of the `Twas The Night Before Christmas in 1823 and a drawing of a tree at England’s Windsor Castle reprinted in Godey's Lady's Book in 1850 that did the most to popularize the highly decorated Christmas trees we know today. Ah, the power of an illustrator! With the exception of in Germany where Queen Victoria’s husband was born, most Christmas trees in the century before the mid-1800s were sparsely decorated with edibles.

I am neither a Christian nor a Celtic Druid afraid of ghosts or a Roman worshipper of Saturn, the god of agriculture. I just like the smell of evergreens in the house and playing with them brings me back to my days of working for a large florist where I spent my fair share of time before Christmas decorating rich people’s houses. Today they’d call it staging a house for the holidays. I was watching a Hallmark holiday movie over the weekend where a woman was hired to stage a house for the holidays and it took her nearly three weeks and, of course, she and her client fell in love along the way. 1) Any stager who would take that long to decorate one house would be out of business in short order. It was a one day on sight job---tops---with two days off sight prep-time, and 2) Clients aren’t usually young guys with beautiful houses and bodies and dimpled cheeks who gives you a key to come and go the whole month of December. Wander out in the morning to make coffee, there she’d be fluffing red bows on boxes. Come home from work, there she’d be hanging Christmas stockings. Okay, I admit it. I might be jealous that I never had a client like Mr. Dimples. I was young, single and looking for love back in my holiday staging days.

Don’t you just love movies with improbable and shallow storylines? I have a love/hate relationship with Hallmark holiday movies but the happy endings for the lost, lonely and often widowed people makes them like a bowl of popcorn I can’t resist. They might reduce falling in love to a two hour cliché but they’re available nearly 24/7 to remind us all of the warm, fuzzy-feelings often mixed with messy, confusing feelings that go along with finding someone to love. As I settle firmly into the world of widowhood, it gets harder and harder to remember stuff like that. 

Speaking of movies, it’s been twelve days since I went across the street to my new neighbor’s house to watch “a Christian movie” with some of her friends. She’s the one with Parkinson’s disease and a whisper soft voice I can barely hear. That night I gave her my contact information including my email address and we have both answered and received an email every night since. We have almost nothing in common. She's very religious and sweet and I'm searching for another word to describe her: not exactly naive or sheltered but definitely different from worldly me. We are connecting on a deep level, I think, because we both know how to be open when writing, with no questions too personal to ask or answer. I hadn't expected a relationship to develop but I'm thinking it's filling a role in both of our lives. For me, it’s a window into the feelings of a severely disabled person. After living twelve years with a disabled husband who couldn’t walk, talk or write I find her internal coping tools and journey fascinating.

And for her, I’m guessing it’s an opportunity for in-depth “conversations” that might be lacking in her life. She has many friends from her old life as a teacher. But from my experience watching old friends interact with my husband after his massive stroke, I know that conversations get shorter, shallower and less satisfying as time passes when someone has to work so hard to be understood. Time will tell if I’m right but she obviously is encouraging the friendship because she bought a copy of Big to play at her next “girl’s movie night” after learning that I’m a Tom Hanks fan and have never seen that film. Neighbors with Keyboards. I think I'll give our email chain a new name.  ©

Note: Tree at the top is the illustration that was in Godey's.