Nature's Decorating for the Holidays

I've been thinking about how much I don't feel like decorating for Christmas this year, only made worse by walking into Pottery Barn the week before Thanksgiving and backing out the door. Holiday music and an overwhelming pine candle scent saturated the air, there were lights and shiny balls and fake greens and...well, it was overwhelming. It may have been beautifully done, I'm not sure, because I didn't wait around to look that closely. My reaction was visceral - I was out of there.

Contrast that to this gnarly old apple tree in a Langley pasture. A few apples hang on the old branches and the sight cheered me up and gave me my first little jolt of holiday cheer. How can we stir our souls and warm our homes during the darkest days of the year without resorting to fake scents, too many twinkly lights and just altogether too much stuff?

Well, at least now I have a goal for the season...

Comments

[wendy john]

So great to hear this point of view! When will this madness ever quit?

[rosekraft]

I'm right there under the apple tree with you...
The decorating glitz and manufactured hominess is just too much to bear.

[valerie Easton]

Very well put - "decorating glitz and manufactured hominess" - I'm going to run a contest next week asking readers to send in descriptions of how they decorate using nature; maybe we can all get inspired to stop spending money and be creative with what is all around us. Bogs has donated a great pair of gardening boots as a prize...stay tuned...
Val

[Mary]

You could not have said it any better. I don't want to go into any stores right now, it just seems so forced.

[Andrea]

I would have backed out too! I work in retail, and what I dislike most is that holidays aren't holidays in retail, they're just another opportunity to squeeze just one more dollar out of customers.
My favorite Christmas decoration is my family! Sure we have decorations and lights we put up, but what makes it Christmas is spending time and celebrating with all the people I love.

[Christina Wilsdon]

I love that most of our decor is family stuff handed down through generations. I love Christmas but hate the merchandising of it, ever earlier each year...Every December it feels as if I'm seeing a bear, beautiful as its own natural self, captured and made to dance on its hind legs in the town square! Your apple tree is definitely like one's own home--a place to escape the forced merriment.

[avi movie editor]

Apple a few surviving old branches cheered me and gave me the spectacle of my first shake a little holiday cheer.