Tinsel
Each December in
the Eisenhower years, Mother would step back from the pine tree in the living
room, freshly festooned with silver threads like Spanish moss, and clap her
hands in delight. Thus began Christmas in our house. For years after, I treasured
the memory of her joy with the tinseled tree, right up to the day when I came
across a definition of tinsel, from the word tinselry, and found it meant "a
cheap and pretentious display."
Fifty years late,
I seethed at the insult to my mother and to my country, where we once laid on thousands
of miles of tinsel for the holiday. In no way did we deserve the label of cheap
or crass, as back then we struggled to pile beauty upon beauty so we could nudge
aside memories of the wars and the Great Depression and polio and McCarthy, at
least for one heartwarming month. Knowing the baby Jesus was greeted with gold,
we were all certain he would be pleased that we still honored his birthday with
ribbons of silver.
Over the course of
years, sensibilities evolved to match the dictionary and such adornment of the
Christmas tree went the way of fedoras and hosiery. I gradually came to accept
this as something other than an affront to my mother, but even to this day the
trees look naked to me, a shorn sheep, a bootcamp haircut. The last time I saw any
tinsel, it was hanging out of a cat's butt.
