The "Jew" Tree

Although both my honey and I were raised Jewish, for the past 4 years we've enjoyed having a holiday tree in our home. They smell delicious, look beautiful and generally add a lot of festive cheer. We cover it in blue and white lights, hang little menorahs and stars of david from it's branches and stash presents underneath that we doll out after lighting the menorah on the eight nights of Hanukkah.

When you get right down to the history, the Christmas or Holiday tree was not born a Christian religious symbol. It was originally a symbol of the Pagan festival Saturnalia and the Winter Solstice. Pagans used to bring cut boughs of evergreen into the house, decorate trees with bits of metal and tiny figures of their fertility god Bacchus to celebrate the Solstice and fertility of the earth. They sometimes added candles for the sun god and the ancient Germans added fruit and candles to honor their fertility god Woden. So, the Pagan Greeks did it, the Pagan Romans did it, the ancient Egyptians did it with palm trees and the ancient Germans did it too. I'm sure that there were people doing it before them too since the evergreen, retaining its beautiful green leaves throughout the winter, has always fascinated human beings with a promise that all life is not lost in the winter.  All of this far predated Christianity and establishes the tree not as a symbol of religion but as a symbol of life, the changing seasons and the fertility of the earth.

Given it's history, I'd say the holiday tree has come a long way. More than anything, it's now adopted as a secular symbol of the holiday season (as in all of them, regardless of religion). Since I've always been down to boogie with a bit of Paganism and have great respect for all peoples and cultures, I tremendously enjoy having a tree to decorate and admire. It's certainly the only one of its kind in my neighborhood and actually had the bad fortune of making some of my more religious family members a little bit uncomfortable. While we definitely don't want to make people uncomfortable with our tree, it's also important to us that people respect our decision and understand that we do NOT have a Christmas tree but a holiday tree, or even a Pagan tree. I never got to enjoy one growing up being that it was "far too Christian" and intend to let my children enjoy one every year for the sheer pleasure of having a bit of life inside when the outside is all cold and frosty (or as frosty as it can be in Los Angeles).



Since it's also important for us to be eco-friendly and environmentally responsible, we get our tree from Santa and Sons every year. Their tree lot is a member of the coalition of environmentally conscious growers. They follow strict practices to ensure that their farming does not harm the land and that they provide an environmentally conscious habitat for any animal visitors that stop by. Overall we feel very comfortable getting our trees from them and even though we no longer live close by we still drive out to get our tree there every year.

Our first tree in 2006 was teeny tiny, barely big enough to put presents under and we kept it in the bedroom so we could look at it all the time. The ornaments came from all over the place, mostly given to us, and were a little too Christmas-y for our tastes.

Poor tree was wedged in next to Button's cat box. Sorry tree!

Our second tree in 2007 was a bit bigger and much more "us". Decked out with white lights, all the ornaments had significance and looked beautiful.



Our third tree in 2008 was humungous and was the first tree we had in the living room at my mother's house. It was covered in white and blue lights with the beginnings of our Hanukkah ornament collection on it. You would be amazed at the amount of Hanukkah ornaments they make now and more come out every year. While my favorite ornaments are actually the animal or personal ones, the Hanukkah ones make the tree more palatable for some of my other family members. We had some seriously fabulous photos of it but all were lost when my laptop hard drive crashed. We miss those pictures!

(This would be where the picture would go

 if we hadn't lost every single one. Boo.)

Finally, our fourth tree from last year was my favorite one to date. We went all out on that baby and got a big beautiful tree that I was able to wrap 4 light strands around. It was covered in a hand picked, meaningful ornaments (even most of the back!) and my sister who has secretly always wanted a tree joined in with the decorating. She even gave me a couple ornaments that we hung proudly at the top in addition to the entire box of Hanukkah ornaments I ordered from various online stores. Lit up that thing glowed like a giant Hanukkah pillar and was deemed less offensive than the previous year.

Like the previous years tree, our cats were the surprise beneficiaries of our lovely tree. They slept under it, played with the cat friendly ornaments on the lower branches and drank from the tree water. It made the whole house feel wintery and festive and there's no way it could have been mistaken for a Christmas tree. This year it's going to be pretty hard to top (the star literally hit the ceiling!) but I'm looking forward to the challenge!