Genealogical Artifact

It stood several feet taller than my head. It smelled like plastic on its best days. It wasn’t terribly comfortable to carry around. Yet, this Christmas tree has meant more to the unity and happiness of my family than I will probably ever realize.

I can remember decorating this tree as far back as elementary school. We still lived in California at the time and that year family home evening was going to be focused on decorating the tree. Mom and dad hefted down those red and green containers full of ornaments I have always remembered us owning. The sounds of Alan Jackson’s Christmas album echoed from the stereo nearby.  My brother and I held back our excitement as we prepared to finally decorate that awesome tree. The moment our parents told us to start, it was a race to see who could put the most on the fastest.  We had no concept of arrangement or spacing out the ornaments on the branches, but we didn’t mind. It was the start of the only tradition we would ever truly stick with.

Every year, the tradition expanded and rooted itself as the year’s biggest family home evening event. The amount of ornaments continually grew, from the incredible millennium ball for 2000 to the red felt Carl’s Jr. star. Our sister eventually was old enough to decorate, picking up the speed of the process. We learned how to space our ornaments, maintain a variety on all angles and even move onto things like strings of stars on the branches. And that same Alan Jackson album played on the stereo every year until we could sing it from memory. This was the time of year when the family was truly united and happy together.

Then the missions came into our lives. Upon returning home, I understood what my family had felt for two years being short one family member on Christmas. On the surface, everything was the same. It was the same ornaments, the same music, the same tree and the same time of the week. Yet, something felt incomplete. I noticed my brother’s ornaments on the branches. There was the ornament ball from his birth year. There was the gold painted macaroni collage he made in pre-school. There was the star ornament with the picture he took with Santa as a baby. All of these were ornaments he was supposed to hang personally. Now he was thousands of miles away spending Christmas in Peru. Looking at everyone’s faces, I knew they were thinking about the same thing. Being short even one person made all of the difference in the world.

The tradition was going to continue regardless. The tree would be brought out of the garage with those same red and green boxes I’m sure are older than me. Alan Jackson would still play those same warbling tunes on the stereo. The tree would be decorated…again. Yet this year, I am sure our thoughts will focus on the day when a beloved brother and son returns to leave his mark once again on that green imitation tree. Only then will the tree truly bring our family together again.

Artist's Statement

            Thinking this assignment over, I realized that I really had no item I personally felt had real significance. A lot of them are tied to good memories and emotions, but only this item that we as a family shared had any true value. Nothing else truly had tradition and emotion attached to it like our Christmas tree did.

            Repetition became a theme that I developed while writing this piece, especially after my initial draft when I felt like it needed better focus. Ideas, actions and feelings would be repeated in several paragraphs. My intent was not to be lazy however. I wanted to communicate the consistency of this tree and event in our lives. As much as traditions evolve, familiarity is something that makes a tradition be a tradition. We do many of these things repeatedly because we love doing them. They lay the groundwork and without them, things do not feel the same.

            This led to the direction of my story aimed towards my brother currently serving on his mission. At some point, I realized how the tree as an object really did not mean much to me. The real reason I connected with the tree was because I connected with my family through it. We had our routines, our traditions and everything we repeated each year. Yet, those things did not matter as much without everyone being there. We built that tradition together and it felt the best when everyone was there to enjoy it.

            As for the structure of the narrative, I felt that simply one story about the tree was not enough for this piece. There were too many Christmases, too many memories and too many moments connected to the tree to say, “This event here was the event I remember this tree by.” The tree was older than that and so was our tradition. I attempted to write the story through bookends, with my earliest and most recent memories of decorating that tree being present. I wanted to feel like the full history of the tree was being represented. Besides, it is not like we could make the tree do anything other than stand there to be decorated. Those branches can only be moved so much to make it feel like thing were different.