A Family Creates New Rituals

Source: Subusky/Pixabay

Four years ago, a friend who lives in Paris decided to address her growing discomfort with the impact that Christmas trees have on the environment. Living trees sacrificed forests, lost needles as they aged, and required chipping (at best) after they had been dragged to the curb following the holidays. Plastic trees were even worse, adding to landfill, polluting oceans, and decomposing at a horrendously slow rate.

Jill Le Grand, her family of origin, her husband, and their daughter had embraced rituals involving their Christmas tree. They lovingly searched for and brought home ornaments when they vacationed, regardless of the season, keeping the miracle that the tree symbolized alive twelve months of the year. They carefully stored the lights and other decorations so that, the following December, decorating the next tree felt like a rebirth. Gifts were wrapped and placed underneath, photos taken in front, and the glow that radiated onto the street below made them smile, whether they were inside enjoying its presence or outside watching it sparkle. They intuitively understood the power of rituals and traditions to show love, cement family identity, and define meaning.

But the family was living in a city with a growing commitment to recycling and other sustainability forms. In 2019, Jill was beginning to believe that the costs to local and global environments were not worth the pleasures brought by their holiday rituals and tradition.

She was an astute businesswoman committed to innovation. Appreciating that innovation is dependent on creativity, she had come to excel in thinking outside of the box. (See J.P. Guilford in 1950, E. Paul Torrance, 1974, and Mark Runco, 2013, references below.) Jill pondered the many ways in which their traditional Christmas tree had meaning in her culture of origin (American), her adopted culture (France), and her specific family.

Most important, it was a core physical symbol of the holiday, one which appeared in the home in preparation for the event and lasted beyond it. The tree was present in their thoughts around the year as they traveled and shopped for souvenirs of their adventures, bringing a reminder of the miracles that Christmas represented to them. For them, the “tree of lights” also represented a “tree of life,” eternal life (reaching back to the Druids), and miracles.

Jill, her husband, and their daughter are avid readers. Citizens of the world, they read in multiple languages and have collected books from around the world. Reasoning that trees are the source of paper, paper can transform into books, and books can transform people into who they want to become. Jill wondered if she could fashion a tree working backward: using finished books (made from what once were trees), she would construct a “tree” on which lights might be strung, and ornaments hung.

Their apartment was a treasure trove of supplies: not a single additional tree would need to be cut down, transported, watered, or eventually chipped. And what better message to add to the meaning of the tree than a wish for peace around the world?

In the first year, they faced structural and design challenges: how can people construct a roughly triangular stable tree out of books of different sizes, shapes, and weights? Jill reasoned that languages did not matter; linguistic fluency could only hasten peace between peoples of different backgrounds.

As books were removed from shelves, storage units, nightstands, desks, and cubbies throughout the apartment, her husband grew alarmed about the disturbance of his carefully organized system of storage. How would she remember where to return his precious books?

Her daughter smiled as she fondled each ornament, remembering its origin and noting changes in each of them and their lives since it was acquired. And her friend (that was me), fascinated, asked if she could take photographs and write about the magical sustainable tree for Bonjour Paris.

Source: Jill Le Grand, with permission

Each year since, construction of the tree has become easier, much like baking a beloved recipe or decorating a gingerbread house.

After her daughter went to college, her husband traded concern for his book order with the pleasures of decorating the tree, creating delight to greet his daughter when she returned for the holidays, as well as personally helping to reshelve his beloved books. No daily watering was needed. No needles are required for vacuuming. No major body strength was necessary to drag the post-holiday tree to the curb. Indeed, like families who have discovered that a fence decorated with lights can stand as a 12-month symbol of light and life, they realized that the removal of the tree bypassed urgency.

The family continues to collect ornaments during vacations, to read ever more broadly and enthusiastically, and to share memories of books and their blessings as each volume temporarily becomes a building block and later silently returns to where it can lure a new reader or welcome a former one.

Rituals forming the new tradition underscore and expand the meaning of the reminders that sunshine and warmth return to bring a rebirth of plant life in the spring, that alternating light and darkness is an eternal truth, and that the light of knowledge can help protect us from illness, ignorance, and evil, and that miracles abound if we open our eyes to seeing old things in new ways.

Cross-Cultural Psychology Essential Reads

6 Psychological Universals

Partitioning the Rainbow: The Influence of Culture on Color

Copyright 2023 Roni Beth Tower