Christmas Decor for The Soul

It’s a comforting time, and just as religions need rituals and sacraments, the Holidays require their own set of practices for meaning and glowy reflection. 

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The interim between Thanksgiving and Christmas holds a special place as the flashback season.  It’s the most repetitious of months, with the mantras of each home sweeping away the year’s changes in favor of softly lit (and probably embellished) timelessness.  The fluffing of the tree and arrangement of the nativity brings last year’s holiday season back to life and, by association, every holiday preceding it with amplified nostalgia.  World events fall away as timeline dots so that decorative adjustments and family changes can step up to mark the years. 

   For this reason I feel that the greatest Holiday traditions are progressive ones.  Hitchcock never films a murder with pacing it with cuts to different camera angles, and I never have Christmas without climbing to its pinnacle rung by candy caned rung.  Advent calendars are easily the most popular form of this, and Hanukkah’s candles are great as well, but it’s always worthwhile to look into unique ways to create this build up.

My father insists on turning our outdoor nativity scene into a moving drama every year.  Most nativities settle for the static scene of everyone gathered around to ponder a born Christ, but there’s not enough engineering prowess in that for dad.  We set the thing up on Thanksgiving Day sans Jesus, the angel, the star, and the Wise Men; there are only shepherds, animals, and Christ’s parents.  The Wise Men are set at the other end of the yard thirty paces from the manger and move a step towards it each day.  The star hangs from wire strung between our poplar trees and the manger so that astronomical accuracy is maintained as it can edges closer to the scene with Christmas’ approach.  The angel and Jesus are stuck out there on Christmas Eve night when the Wise Men arrive with the star.  Of course, the whole process has grown over the years and I think that eventually we will have the animals graze in different parts of the yard and have a few of Herod’s baby killers on the sideline waiting to storm into Bethlehem.