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Shianne Priest of Old Town is a mother, a music educator and a believer in the spirit of Christmas.
A new house sometimes calls for a new Christmas tree. So, a few years ago, having just moved into a new home, I found myself in the market for a tree. Having left a home with a very high ceiling in the living room, it was clear that short of drilling a hole through the ceiling and roof of my new house, we were not going to be fitting the old tree into the new living room.
Now, I’m a Christmas baby with the middle name of Noël, so I took this tree-purchasing job very seriously and did my research. I eventually settled on a tree that was the most highly rated — the tree of all trees. It even came with lighting options, so that one could have white lights, colored lights, or both on at the same time. Imagine that! The first time I turned it on, it was so bright, I was pretty sure it could be seen from space.
When we went to set our beloved tree up a few weeks ago, I noticed that one strand of colored lights and one strand of white lights had failed since last year. I decided it would be OK for this year because where the white lights were out, at least the colored lights were still on, and vice versa.
But one morning recently, I rose before sunrise and went downstairs to turn my tree on, as I do every morning in December. I was dismayed to find a large bald spot on my tree. Yes, in this one sizable spot, all the lights had failed overnight. Every last one.
So, I did what any self-respecting Christmas baby and lover of all things Christmas tree would do. I started shopping for a new tree. But it didn’t take long to realize that I was up against several obstacles. The price of trees in December is very high. The shipping of trees in December is very slow. Lastly, but not least, just the thought of undecorating and taking apart the tree that I already have up, only to go through the process of assembling and decorating another tree, made me feel tired like Santa on Dec. 26.
So there I sat one night, late after the house was quiet and the world was still, staring at my tree, with its bald spot. I thought about the words of a wise friend after I sent a picture of the light-challenged tree. My friend simply said, “It’s still beautiful, Shianne.” My friend did not say that it would be beautiful if it was only perfect. My friend noticed the tree’s beauty in spite of the flaw.
This got me thinking about my life. Your life. All of our lives. Don’t we all have beautiful things and moments in a flawed life? Myself, it’s not lost on me that my life is full of blessings. But I spend moments of every single day having regrets that every part of every day isn’t perfect.
Some days I stay at work too long and don’t have enough time to clean the house. Some days the dog and I don’t get out for a walk. I don’t read enough books. I don’t get enough sleep. I don’t drink enough water. Have I spent enough time with my teenage son to give him a bank of memories to last his lifetime? Most days, the way I think about myself is like that Christmas tree. A beautiful life with little twinkling lights that are never all on at once.
But what if we are all like my tree and thousands of other trees that are loved despite the fact that they are crooked, or have a broken ornament, or are missing a few lights? If a Christmas tree can be perfectly imperfect, can’t a day with an incomplete to-do list still give us perfect memories? Isn’t it safe to say that to be beautiful, a day, or a life, doesn’t have to have every light on all the time?
What makes a tree with such a flaw still something to behold with wonder? Well, it’s that we love what we see and what it has. We focus on what’s there, not what’s missing. We forgive the flaws. We forgive the imperfections. Yes, we give the tree the grace and compassion we should give ourselves. We choose to see only what gives us joy. We choose to see the good.
I’m keeping the tree. It’s not perfect. Neither am I. I’ll continue to focus on the light the tree gives and the warmth I feel from looking at it. When the magic of December has come and gone, and the doubts of January set in, I’ll think of the tree, packed away, and remind myself that every light doesn’t have to be lit for a tree, or a person, to shine.