When we were little, my sister and I would play paper dolls with cutouts from catalogues or any magazine we could scrounge up or which came in the mail. Our folks could not afford to waste money on those paper doll figures sold in stores, and since the pictures in the catalogues were not printed on that thin card paper, we were always having to replenish our supply. For furniture, we’d use whatever we could find in the house and would even section out the rooms of our pretend homes with string, or small rocks from outside. I remember making couches, tables, and beds out of small boxes and covering them with some of Mama’s quilting squares. Empty thread spools were our end tables, and so on. My brother, the artist from early on, steadfastly refused to play paper dolls with us but he was often willing to make things for us, like lamps made out of sticks and cloth. We didn’t have much but we all possessed very vivid imaginations that kept us going throughout the childhood years. That and a great sense of humor from Mama and each other.
So when Christmas time rolled around, we’d be busy trying to create festive decorations with what little we had. I have warm feeling of Christmas growing up. Some of the best memories happened at church. The second week of December, the church would begin singing those wonderful Christmas hymns. Classic traditional carols that I still love to hear and sing. On Christmas Eve, the adult choir would perform, the junior choir would belt out a few songs as well, and the kids would re-enact the Christmas story–costumes and all. After the evening service, and not all the time, there would be cookies and punch (cherry Kool-Aid) and a bag of hard candy which we would guard with our lives. I still buy myself the old fashion Christmas candy to enjoy. It’s the memories that come with seeing and tasting the traditional sweets that invokes moments of happiness. Nostalgia rules at Christmas time. And I carry warm feelings of Christmas even though we didn’t receive many presents. Some years we’d have a Christmas tree, some years we didn’t. One Christmas, Mama told us that we wouldn’t be getting a tree. We didn’t have the money. I’m sure we were disappointed. We were just kids after all. But you know, we weren’t the only Indian family on the rez who went without.
However, when we found out that we would not be getting a tree, we decided a few days before Christmas that we–the twins and I–would hike into the desert to look for something that could serve as a Christmas tree. My brother grabbed Daddy hatchet and off we went. We looked at many mesquites and considered whacking off a branch, and we considered pulling out a young tree with our bare hands but in the end decided against both. As we trekked back home we noticed a bunch of tumbleweeds a wind had stacked up against a clump of desert plants. My brother joking suggested that we take the biggest one home and transform it into a Christmas tree. We shared a good laugh at first but then decided to do just that. We hadn’t had a tumbleweed Christmas tree before and we weren’t sure Mama would allow it in the house since tumbleweeds are prickly and easily fall apart. But we determined to plow through with our plans and selected the fullest one and hauled it home using mesquite branches that had long fallen to the desert floor. Mama was reluctant at first but eventually gave into our whines and allowed us to set it up in the corner of the living room where it would be out of the way. She didn’t want anyone getting stabbed by the dry prickly branches and she didn’t want to be forever sweeping sticks off the floor since tumbleweeds degrade rather quickly. I believe we used one of Mama’s smaller tubs to secure the tumbleweed. We decorated it with ribbons, tinsel and beat-up garland kept from previous years. Tumbleweeds can’t hold much weight so we had to keep everything light-weight. And we didn’t put lights on it since lights back then were not the mimi lights of today but those big bulbs. We had fun with our tumbleweed Christmas tree. We laughed and joked about it but that messy dry plant gave us some wonderful memories. It also gave us a lot of scratches on our arms and hands!
Our tumbleweed Christmas tree came down Christmas morning. Mama had had enough of sweeping up dry twigs that constantly littered the floor. So we carried our now mangled creation outside and dismantled it. Then back to the desert we returned what was left of it and humorously spoke our thanks and goodbyes. It tumbled away in the wind, leaving its memories with us.
***Thank you for taking the time to read my posts. This is my last post. At least for a while. Maybe forever. My website will go dark at the end of this month. Who knows, I may resurrect it in a year. You never know. But anyway…have a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! Tumbleweed Christmas trees rule!
