What I remember most about Christmas Past was the tree.

We weren’t a religious family, and Christmas wasn’t as big a deal at our house as it was at my friend’s homes, but we still had a tree. I suppose my mother realized it was all a big deal for kids, especially the presents, so she went along with it for my sake. My brother was seven years younger than I was, and by the time he was old enough to understand the festival, we had pretty much abandoned the custom.

But I remember the season and the celebrations, especially the tree. The tree was where the presents were kept, and that was a very big deal. It was the only time when I got really nice toys, the rest of the year was pretty barren for gifts. Like all kids, I was a pretty greedy little bastard, and that’s all that mattered. If I didn’t get that big flashy toy at Christmas then I probably wouldn’t get it the rest of the year. I remember the bitter disappointment when well-meaning relatives gave me the usual practical gifts, like clothes, but I was carefully coached to act properly surprised and grateful.

The gift packages were arrayed under the tree, and wrapped in colorful papaer. My mother saved all the old Dictaphone belts from work (translucent red bands of plastic from a stenographer’s dictation recording device) and she cut them up into strips and stapled them into rosettes that doubled as festive bows and simulated ribbons. We opened the presents on Christmas Eve, just before we went to bed. But I can’t remember even one of my gifts from that time. What I do remember was the tree itself. It was magic.

We bought the tree and brought it home about the middle of December, and we kept it in the living room until New Year’s day. It dominated the room, and I was fascinated by it. The tree had the odd and wonderful smell of a conifer that was not native to Florida, and the smell filled the living room. It was wonderful. Added to that was the smell of the decorations, the tinsel and angel hair seemed to have their own scent, and the lights were extremely hot, and had a definite acrid ozony/electrical stench to them that was quite unmistakeable. The decorations and the tree were all highly flammable, in fact, the damn thing was dangerous as hell, a real fire hazard, and we were never allowed to leave it turned on when we went to bed. But the smell was what really got to me.

Back then, Christmas tree lights were simple colored bulbs linked in series, so if one went out the whole string went dark. You had to go through a meticulous trial-and-error sequence of bulb changes until you found the bad one and replaced it. The bulbs often snapped off from the threaded metal bases that screwed into the cord sockets, leaving glass to cut you, and the very real possibility of electrocution if you didn’t remove them carefully. They didn’t have blinking bulbs then, although they had just invented a new kind that had a tube with a colored liquid in it that bubbled from the heat. My mom never got those, she said they were a fire hazard, although I realize now she probably just couldn’t afford them. The decorations were mostly exceedingly fragile colored reflective glass spheres, also a source of potential injury if they shattered on the floor, or in your hand. The whole thing was dangerous to have in your living room, and even as a kid I was well aware of it.

But it was all worth it, the lights reflecting off the tinsel and decorations, the glow diffusing through the nebulosities of angel hair (spun glass, another safety hazard,) the smells, the way the pine needles fell off if you just touched them, was just magic. Even the container of water the tree was precariously balanced in glistened with the reflections. I could sit for hours by the tree, just staring into its mysterious depths, every place, every perspective, every point of view revealed new secrets, new surprises. I fantasized I was traveling inside the tree, like a tiny bird flying through a vast jungle canopy, or a little fish swimming through a tangle of vegetation deep in the sea.

I knew perfectly well what I was looking at, I had helped decorate the tree, but the tree, although made of familiar things, when put together became a magic city, its own little universe of light, color, shadows, shapes and reflections. And of course, the smells. The smells triggered the magic, and my memory evokes the smell.

This is powerful stuff, limbic system stuff, real lizard brain stuff.. The lights and wires are like the neurons and synapses in our skulls. I can see why so many grown-up cynical people today still feel compelled to have some kind of Christmas tree, no matter where they are or what they are doing during the holidays. And I know this goes back, way back. Long before Christianity there were pagan rituals built around decorated trees and nightime lights; perhaps even Neolithic tribesmen huddled in their caves, worshipping the mistletoe around the fire while the cold snow blew off the glacier outside..

We stoped celebrating Christmas before I entered my teens, but I think it was a mistake. There is a link here to another place, another time, and something very fundamental about being human. Something mysterious, even a bit scary is in the tree, but something still accessible to a child, a deep racial memory we should teach to our kids, to pass on to theirs, a lost history we can’t allow ourselves to fully forget. Its like the feeling you get when you stare into a campfire, or the fireplace. There is an ancient memory there, just beyond our grasp.