Last night at sundown, I look to the southwestern sky for Jupiter and Saturn, kissing, so near, so close. Oh, but in all actuality, those two planets are more than 450 million miles apart. And we little Earthlings are another 550 million miles from Jupiter. But, they looked like they were rubbing noses.
Of course, I didn’t see a thing. It was too cloudy. I might go out tonight and take another glance. But the way I see it? (Or not.) My life has gone on just fine without witnessing the two of them together. They swing by one another every 20 years, making their big loops around the sun. Perhaps I’ll see them another time.
The entire hubbub made me wonder how old I’d be if I were from those places. On Jupiter, I’d be ten years old, and some change. On Saturn, I’d have just turned four. It would be a long four.
Both things remind me of three important lessons. Age is relative. Appearances can be deceiving. And we all keep spinning around the sun.
To that end, it seems, we’re coming on Christmas. They’re cutting down trees. They’re putting up reindeer and singing songs of joy and peace. But, the truth of the matter remains, none of us have a river to skate away on. Christmas 2020 has been plopped right down amidst a pandemic. There are concessions to be made on these slippery slopes.
Most of us are still putting up Christmas trees. I don’t know what the percentage might be this year. Who knows? Maybe more, maybe less, depending on the mood of the axeman. But historically, 77% of Americans put up trees in their homes.
We can give thanks to the Germans for those decorated branches, which date back to Germany in the Middle Ages. And it was that band of German descendants who crossed the water and settled here in the United States, bringing their traditions with them. They made Christmas trees popular in America by the early 19th century.
Of course, it wasn’t long until industry caught up with the tradition. A New York woodsman named Mark Carr gets credit for opening the first U.S. Christmas tree lot. Yes, in 1851. These days, those tree lots fall prey to plastic. An estimated 81 percent of trees are artificial, and 19 percent are live/dead.
It cracks me up when people say, “We have a REAL tree every year.” They’re all real, bubba. You think mine is some kind of hallucination?
Anyway, ho, ho, ho. Back to Christmas. Trees are a symbol of life, hence the connection to the Christmas tradition. Which becomes quite curious to me — when we cut them down, killing them, dragging them into our homes, screaming. They were perfectly happy where they were, I imagine.
We seem to be hell-bent on this destructive path, as the Yule Log is also a tradition. Yule logs were part of ancient winter solstice celebrations. And again, it carried forward. But leave it to Americans to put the glitz on. We’ve turned it into TV. This started back in 1966. The station was WPIX-TV in New York City, and they aired a continuous 17-second loop of a fireplace for three hours along with holiday music. The productions got better over the years and continued to be an annual event. Today, you can view the yule log on demand and on the web. But it doesn’t smell the same or give off the heat.
Finally, another holiday tradition comes in the way of sending cards. This started in England in 1843. There was a simple message in the cards: “A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to You.” This caught on in the U.S., obviously. A Kansas City-based Hall Brothers (now Hallmark) created a nifty folded card sold with an envelope in 1915. These days, more than 1.6 billion holiday cards are sold annually. I checked the figures on this. For every one billion Christmas Cards, there will be 33 million trees cut down for the paper.
Oh, it appears I’ve been hard on the Christmas Tradition. But I have one more to add. I don’t think Santa keeps a naughty / nice list. I think he loves us all, especially if we are trying. All of us, at any moment, can be a bright, bright star, or a tall, tall tree. No matter where we are.
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“We are what we believe we are!”
― C.S. Lewis
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“Not just beautiful, though–the stars are like the trees in the forest, alive and breathing. And they’re watching me.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore
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“The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself.”
― Carl Sagan
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