Last weekend my wife and I went to our cabin near Mount Lassen in the California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains. We purchased a Christmas tree permit allowing us to catch one tree in the Lassen National Park, in the middle of the trees shown in the accompanying photo. We were at about the 5,500 foot (1675 meters) elevation, at a time of year that should have had a couple of feet of snow on the ground, but we only found traces in the shady locations. We were successful in finding a very pretty little tree.

Now that we have it home and set up in our living room the question of decorations has come up. So far we have decided leave it nude, no lights, no decorations. It was a difficult decision, but we finally decided that what we really like is the tradition of a tree, and the smell of the tree – maybe the decorations aren’t important. I am finding that the presence of a nude tree is a little unsettling. It is causing me to wonder about the meaning of the tradition. It seems to be related to the comfort of our family sharing each other. This year covid-19 has changed things so that we won’t have family to our house, so that we aren’t doing it for the children. Then there is a question of what do the decorations mean, are they important in some way beyond them being pretty? It does feel odd, and somehow incomplete, to have a pretty little naked tree sharing our living room – a dead pretty little naked tree. When I was a child my mother put up a bare manzanita limb. No leaves, just a jagged limb that was perhaps 3 feet tall. I didn’t like it at all, it just wasn’t a “Christmas Tree”. Our new little tree feels a little like that, it is a tree – but perhaps not a “Christmas Tree.” I am interested in seeing how this experiment works out as we get closer to Christmas. Will we learn to come to experience the same thing? Will we break down and put decorations on it? Will we do it again next year? It is an interesting opportunity to watch myself.