Christmas Out of The Box

It is not only the young that can be creative or those we deem as creative beings. All of us have each other’s permission to be creative and to think outside the box, to see what in the world needs to change, and to work to change it.

Jean Vanier says that his work is never about changing the world; it’s about changing ourselves.

Most people with new ideas and innovations are almost always rejected by mainstream society. Martin Luther King, Frida Kahlo, Schopenhauer, Marcel Proust, Walt Whitman, Georgia O’Keefe, Louis Riel, Ghandi, James Dean, Rudolf Nureyev, Rosa Parks, Lenny Bruce, Apostle Paul, Mary Wollstonecraft, Vincent van Gogh, Galileo, Harvey Milk, Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer…who Einstein called “geniuses in the art of living.”

Our fear of change, of the unknown, of humiliation, of being judged or ostracized; all fears that can lead us astray from our creative and whole selves.

We cannot change the world. We can’t fix everything. It’s not even our job. All we need to do is our part. Maybe just one thing.

Could we not be too busy to cheer a weary soul, give some words of reassurance, a small gift, an act of service, or the gift of our welcoming ear?

Sr. Simone Campbell – lawyer, nun, poet, and a bit of a religious rock star as the face of the “Nuns on the Bus”, calls this “the walking willing.”
It was Roosevelt who said that in any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.

“The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning oneself.” -Friedrich Nietzsche

We need to take the initiative to make our visions a reality.

Which brings me to Christmas tree decorating.

Yes, that was quite a leap. But I’m not generally known for beating around the bush, or tree.

So. The tree.

It is difficult to replicate the experience of pulling on long johns, three pairs of socks, ski pants, trail gaiters, the hand-knit reindeer sweater you got from Aunt Mabel last Christmas, Sorrel boots, a down-filled parka, toque, two scarves, a pair of gloves stuffed inside wool mitts, and rummage through the bowels of your basement to upturn an axe and some rope. You warm up the car, drive 57 minutes out to the country – getting lost twice – and then trudge through knee-high snow for another hour painstakingly searching for that one special ‘Charlie Brown’ Christmas tree.

Sweating profusely while engaging in a goodly amount of profanity, you slowly drag it back through the dense bush, suffering minor scrapes and bruises attempting to retrace your circuitous steps. With turgid fingers, you manage to rope it to the roof of your car and stop no fewer than four times along the road to re-secure it.

Now if you think outside the box, or better yet, inside a box, you can go into a big box store and in under five minutes, bring home either a white, red, pink, blue, silver, or purple tree. Lights included.

And the extra benefit? You can still imbibe from your whiskey flask while decorating. Although now you don’t need it to thaw out your innards and out-ters.

And the tree pretty much stays upright. Even if you are having trouble.

Which brings me to decorating the tree.

Do you really want to, yet once again, drag out those old and faded, cracked and crumbing, red and green decorations?

No? Then think outside the box.

Or inside the box.

Augment those decorations of sentient and sentiment, the others that have been passed down through the generations, and even – yes, some red and green ones – and then buy some ‘new’ antique ornaments, the ones you had as a child back in 1658.

Now given you may actually want a green tree, you can decorate it with irreverent, I mean irregular, colour combinations of no more than three or four colours. Vary the shapes, sizes and textures of the decorations and fill it to overflowing.

I know. High in optimism, low in reality.

If you are now more than overwhelmed, sufficiently unconcerned, or have a tendency to break things that you did not think could be broken, I can innocuously pop by and decorate your tree, just like these Trees I Have Known and Decorated for clients thus far this Season.

Or be a non-conformist and use “out of the box” ornaments, like a tree decorated with Matryoshka dolls, balsa-wood fish, handmade fabric dolls, feathers, ceramic flip-flops, hearts, starfish…

Be impecunious with a tree laden just with holiday lights, making your life low in stress and high in meaning.