Thoughts On A Christmas Tree

Imagine a Christmas tree. Not just any Christmas tree, but a fir tree rising several stories high, towering over the luxe shopping village of Beverly Hills, 'The Grove'. It seems impossible that it would be real as one rushes to the concrete rim of multilevel parking site to gaze out at it.

"No, it can't be real." one decides. "It is fake." But it was not.

We had gone out for an afternoon's jaunt, milking the last drops from Christmas vacation, the last sugary, peppermint sparkly drops from what has been a wonderful season, carefully planned and honored. We were not disappointed. Santa's sleigh flew overhead, his reindeer pawing at the air, exhilarating and precarious.

We approached the tree, still convinced it was an artificial illusion. Standing at the base, it seemed to rise into an apex one could not deduce. It seemed to go on forever, with ornaments as big as a man's head. People tentatively touched the needles. Then an old woman spoke.

"The tree is real. And it is all one tree."

Amazed, we ran around to look at a sign the management had erected. It was a 100 foot tall White Fir tree harvested from the forests of Northern California. It was 86 years old. After this time, such trees either succumb to disease or fall because of their great weight. It was harvested to this glorious end, strung with thousands of ornaments and even more thousands of densely wrapped lights. What a wonderful glorious end for its long and anonymous life.

This tree was even larger than the one at New York's Lincoln Center, a natural marvel, and a marvel of frozen time. "Eighty Six years..." I thought, looking into the dense web of branches to its improbably strong core. What was happening when this great tree was a sapling?

It was another world, unrecognizable from the fast-paced knowledge based information linked world of today. It was a smaller world, and a world so unfathomably large that peoples and cultures never mingled. When this tree was a sapling, there was no aviation, no sports cars... heck, there were barely cars. As I stood in the heart of Hollywood, I thought of the time again.

When this tree was a sapling it would have been 1921. There weren't even talkies then. It was the days of Rudolf Valentino, Theda Bara, nouveau Vamps and throwbacks to Edwardian angels. And here we were, standing in wonder at the base of this gigantic tree. How many people had lived, loved, bred and died within the span of its life's journey that brought it to this moment? The world has changed, shifted, morphed. I felt so much time, so much life, so much silence of this great plant wash over me. It gave me chills.

After the holidays, the tree will give yet more gifts to man, mulch and firewood. Fourteen new white fir trees will be planted in its place. Surely not all of them will survive, but if one lives as long and strong as this one, what kind of world will it find in 2093?