Finding Christmas in Simple Things

Reader Contribution by Deb Bisel
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In the alley behind our city house, there are yews stretching beyond the neighbors’ yards: It is best to clip them. So I fill my basket over and over, bringing the rich green boughs to the doorways, to wreaths, to pots — bringing a little of the everlasting into our home.

Each snip takes me back to the Blue Ridge Mountains, to Granny’s woods. It is more than a thousand miles and decades past, yet the experience remains a part of me. The world was small, our hilltop, Granny’s hollow. After Thanksgiving dinner, we took tow sacks into the woods and filled them with ivy, running cedar and white pine tips. The smell of earth and evergreen was on our coats and gloves.

We spread out the greenery on Granny’s porch, shaking leaves and sticks from shades of green. Then we gathered round the table with twine, cardboard, wire, and scissors. Granny cut shapes, mostly circles and crosses, and we sewed the white pine tips to the cardboard. We took wire coat hangers and stretched them into circles with a perfect hook ready-made. We wound the running cedar round, and round, and round, til the wreath was full. Ivy tips went into arrangements, in containers with a past — Christmases past, tabletops with cakes and turkeys, mantles with stockings and candles. We picked Galax leaves, too, and tucked them into the arrangements, their waxy leaves sometimes brilliant green, sometimes with a hint of red. Sweet potato pies stayed warm above the woodstove, and we took a slice now and then. Granny scooted a pot of perked coffee, half full, across the cooktop so that it was just above the fire to heat up again. This was the smell of Christmas–white pine, sweet potatoes, coffee.

We had picked up pine cones, too, and oak balls, and milkweed pods which we spray-painted gold or silver. Sometimes we left them naturally brown. Granny wired them onto the greenery. In a box way back in the closet, Granny kept ribbon and old ornaments. She took the old bows apart, ironed them flat again, and retied them. This was the meaning of Christmas — old treasures, new life. Promises.

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