The Year the Tree Stayed Up

It turned into multiple years. I’m not sure I can take it down. Plus, a sparkly vintage jewelry tree—enchanting or gaudy, your call.

Today’s letter is about trees, one big and one small, about the whimsy of glass ornaments and the history they hold, about the ways in which things become familiar or, as in The Velveteen Rabbit, real. Today is about embracing symbols and remembering that there is no single path.

A vintage jewelry tree, unfinished. A. Cowen

Happy Sunday!

I hope your December has been good. I hope you look for, find, and make symbols that help mark the path of your days.

There is a lot of tree-talk below, with some ornaments mixed in. There are also links to annual reflection and planning tools.

Things feel a bit disjointed, but all the things are in process, including a series of wonky digital drawings of my mom, the final days in my illustrated journal for the year, and the final week of tracking morning light in December. 

There is an amaryllis on the verge of opening. It has grown measurably each day. There was a giant ginkgo. There were tile stairs to find and a blueberry scone. There was an office game of Pictionary and many, many games of Skribble.io at home (and much laughter).¹

My anniversary was yesterday, and it slid quietly by, only my need to mark these dates giving it a dog-eared corner in my head, the rustle of the paper cranes. In a few days, we will celebrate the holiday, all of us remembering last year’s Christmas Day.

I hope your December has been good and peaceful. I hope you look for, find, and make symbols that help mark the path of your days as the year winds down. I hope you look back at the year and see how the dots line up, how they are connected, and how the thread flows.

Thank you for reading.

Amy

Missing this cuddly companion, too. A. Cowen 2021

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We all benefit from strong creative habits and routines, and I look forward to documenting life alongside you in the coming year in our illustrated journals.

For the best viewing experience, use the app or view in a browser. There are a number of photos, which means this may be too long for email.

The Year the Tree Stayed Up

By now, if you are a tree person, your tree is up. I hope it is full of ornaments and decorations that are special to you and your family, your unique mix of homemade or glass, whimsical or refined, robots or trains or kittens in slippers, Santas or nutcrackers or snowmen. I hope there are lights. I hope you spend time in the early morning, in the dark of the room, with the tree lights on, or late at night when the world has hushed. 

I think a tree softens a room.
With its sometimes chaotic mix of color and pattern, it is almost counterintuitive the quiet and calm a tree can bring.

A tree can be peaceful.
A tree can be a lullaby.
A tree can be a poem.
A tree can be a talisman.

Some families put their tree up around Thanksgiving, but our tree has been up for several years. 

The fact that I can’t immediately tell you how many Christmases it has stood sentry bothers me. It’s been long enough that we no longer notice, long enough that it no longer seems odd that we have a Christmas tree up year round. 

The house is small, and yet part of the living room is occupied by the Christmas tree. It has settled into the space, blending into the surrounding furniture, the walls, the angles, the art on the wall, and the feeling of the room. It simply belongs here.

Looking back at my online receipts, I ordered the lights in December 2021. 

I left the tree up because I felt like it might be the last year.

But before I realized that, I spent time taking the old lights off the artificial tree. It had seemed like a simple idea at the time. The bones of the tree were good enough. We didn’t need to waste money on a new tree, but there were so many lights out that we had to do something. Adding a new strand seemed like a way to potentially salvage the existing tree. We talked about just running a new strand over top of everything, but we decided it would be better to remove the old lights completely.

I bought a giant strand of LED lights, and we spent hours untwisting the old ones. We hadn’t counted on the fact that the lights were woven throughout the tree, intricately twisted and looped and wrapped around the branches, each light basically twist-tied in place. It took hours and days untwisting the sharp metal ties, ties so old they seemed to have grown into the tree, well on their way to becoming real. After removing the old ones, I wound the new lights round and round and round.

As the tree widened, I wound lights halfway and moved around the tree to grab the end to move them around again and again and again, twirling in space, dizzy with the reality of the year.

A Color Shift

I grew up with colored lights, and our tree had always glowed with colored lights.

But when the new lights came, they gave me the chance to change to colored or white or a softer colored set, with a range of brightness settings.

I fell in love with the white lights and discovered we actually can change something we think is baked in. 

Last year, the lights came on in the night twice, by themselves.

Let’s Just Leave It Up

Back in 2021, I strung the new lights, and we oohed and aahed and enjoyed the tree. We were charmed by having grown into white lights, by the newfound softness. The new year came and went, and the tree stood. That wasn’t unusual. It often stood into February, or even March. There may have been one year where we pushed on the borders of Easter. 

The decision to leave it up was subtle, almost subconscious. Gradually, the year moved on, and the tree continued to stand. 

I dreaded having to take the lights back off in order to dismantle and store the tree. Every time I would suggest we take it down, someone would say they liked having it up. 

The tree is a touchstone of history, of a move to San Francisco, of a small ornament store and glass blown ornaments, of having and raising two little boys, of a fat cat and then a tiny gray dog.

When it was time to start putting everything away, I felt like things were going to happen that year.

I don’t know how direct I was about it (even with myself) at the time. I just know I felt the weight of the symbol. I felt like it meant something.

I felt like the tree should stay up, a bright spot in the house, a witness to the year. 

The longer I left it up, the more I worried about tipping the balance of the world by taking it down. 

Christmas came again, and the same reasoning still held. So I left it up again. This is Christmas number four.

I was a few years early, but even that says a great deal about the tenor of the last few years. 

Same Tree, New December

This week, we wandered into a new ornament store, truly the most beautiful store I’ve ever seen. All of the trees are white and are loaded with blown glass ornaments. Trees line the walls and both sides of a long center table, each decorated with ornaments of a theme, a tree of foods, a tree of nutcrackers, a tree of LGBTQ+ rainbows, a tree of mushrooms, a tree of seaside motifs, a tree of musical instruments, a tree of birds, and so on. It was amazing. 

I found several ornaments I wanted. I kept thinking about what to buy, what to add to the tree that would feel symbolic in this year, something to mark this new stage, a nod to history and memory, a sign of remembrance. There were three I pondered, maybe four, as I slowly circled the store a second time. I ended up buying nothing, too many choices and too much reality.²

Light on the Tree

Right now as I write this, it’s early one morning, and there is light coming from the window that is illuminating just one narrow band of the tree. What is isolated in the sliver of light is a little gingerbread house. It’s possible it is a church. I can’t tell from where I am sitting in the dim light of morning. The patch of light is actually brightening as I write, as if the intensity of the light is responding to my words. 

It’s a church, and just behind the church and down a little bit, there is a Santa in a white robe covered with red hearts. That Santa was from our first Christmas here, a discovery of another small ornament store, another street, a new life just on the verge of taking off.

Just part of Santa’s face is in the light. Forming the third leg of this illuminated triangle, one of the clip-on birds, a gold one, is catching light on its head. 

We all know that the longer something stays, the more we take it for granted. The more used to something we get, the more comfortable it may be, but also the less we notice it. We take in the whole, the softened edges. We know the totality of our tableaux.

After the first year, I worried that the magic of the tree would disappear with familiarity, with having it always in view. I decided not to light the tree during the year, although I may have made an exception on a birthday here and there.

Something that seems really unusual, or even difficult or challenging, mellows over time. That’s why new habits work. If you stick with them long enough, they become a part of what you do and who you are. 

We write our own stories. We draw the contours. We shine light on certain scenes. We drop the transparent lens and colored filters in place. 

Day to day, I don’t even think about the fact that I have a Christmas tree up. Until somebody comes into the house, it’s really not something that stands out to me. But when someone comes—the pizza delivery person, a son’s girlfriend, the appraiser, an electrician, a physical therapist or a home health aide—I am always keenly aware of the oddity of the tree. 

I do recognize how eccentric it must seem.

It stood the first year, and it seemed like a bad idea to take it down then. And then it stood another year, and again it seemed like a really bad idea to test fate and take it down. This year, I reached a point where I was ready to take it down. Leaving it up year after year suddenly seemed silly. I was tired of the tree, tired of the cramped space. 

But this year was the year. In the spring when I thought I should take it down, I also had the vague sense that if I took it down and something happened, I might never put it back up. 

It has always saddened me that people (who are tree people) reach a point where they stop putting up a tree. (I know there are all kinds of reasons.) 

I don’t want to be a person who doesn’t put up a tree, but I’m afraid that might be who I am. It’s a lot of hassle to put up a tree. I was never the fluffer. I really don’t like fluffing. In some years, I didn’t even do the ornaments. There were many years where we pulled ornaments from the red ornament boxes and handed them to the boys, one by one, to put on the tree while we waited for pizza to arrive. 

I don’t know what will happen this year. I think there’s a real chance that if I take it down, I won’t put it back up. The months do go quickly. I might should just leave it up until I leave…a vague reality I am still circling.

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Another Tree

A tree spotted in an antiques store window. A. Cowen, 2019

There aren’t enough December weeks. With two trees flanking my space, one big and one small, I thought I might just write about this tree today, just focus on the shimmer and shine. The sparkle of this one has been pushed aside by the symbolism of the other, but I still want to mention this tree.

A few years ago, my mom and I wandered into an antique store. I had caught sight of a vintage jewelry Christmas tree in the window that enchanted me with its pearl-encrusted sparkle. 

Going into that shop and seeing those trees was a moment of slow. That moment when you walk in the door, hear a little bell jingle, and there is a hush, a different tenor to the space... you feel like you’ve walked into slow. (Episode 433)

That was in 2019. It took a few years before I had enough materials to start my own, mostly from my mother bringing bags of old and discarded or broken jewelry to which I added a few containers of fake pearls.

Vintage jewelry tree, unfinished. This one uses straight pins to attach the elements. A. Cowen, 2024

It takes a lot of jewelry to make one of these trees. This one is not even very tall. The tree sits on a bookshelf unfinished, but it has enough surface coverage to be satisfying. Like the big tree, this small one has become a part of the space. 

I used straight pens to attach things (no glue), so everything is removable, and everything is also fragile. Everything can fall out. There is a curious aura of history blended with transience to the entire piece. When you press your hands to any of the pieces they have some give. They shift. 

It’s unfinished, but I love it.

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Decembers Past

There are so many years now of posts and podcast episodes about ornaments and lights that it is hard to mention all the things. (Maybe I should write about these things in July instead.) 

Most everything is really old now, but here are a few:

• Year Over Year (434)

• Tree In the Window (433)

• Ornaments (480) (about a cool book about an ornament collection)

• Velveteen Rabbit (reading)

You can also find a list in this post, though you may find that the links lead to spidery webs where other links don’t work. 

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Assorted portraits (some unfinished) from recents weeks in my illustrated journal. A. Cowen, 2024.

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Planning Tools

For many years, I have posted a few end-of-year/new year things to help with year-end reflection and planning. I don’t manage to do any of these things until at least the final days, but I know many people do these things earlier in the month. I’ve shared the Sketchnote Your Year challenge as well as questions for reflecting on the creative year. (These can be viewed as interconnected, one feeding the other. Or, you can think of one as a creative task and one as a cerebral one.) A simple set of planning questions will be posted later this week.

A window display this week, full of layers and reflections. A. Cowen, 2024

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Weekly Bits and Pieces

• Prompts for Illustrate Your Week - Week 52

• Diary List Comics / 52 Weeks (almost a wrap on a full year)

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Made It?

Thank you for reading along! I always enjoy your comments and invite you to chime in. Let me know what stands out for you, what you think after reading, or where we connect.

• An adjective that comes to mind after reading

• A favorite December symbol in your house

• Ribbon or stick-on bows

• Something you will draw this week

Thank you to those who have made use of the discount on an annual subscription, and thank you to the first sustainability supporter. Thank you for an unexpected treat from the wish list. There have been kind words, too, and postcards. All of it makes a difference.

Are you still considering an illustrated journal project for the new year? I see more and more people keeping this kind of journal. If you are tempted, you might give it a try over the next week to see how it feels. Check out the weekly Illustrate Your Week prompts for some simple nudges.

Note: I will be drawing with a small group of women via Zoom on the morningi8j of New Year’s Eve. If you are interested in joining for some easy year-end community to help close out the year, let me know.

The illustrated journal is the one project that is always in play. It is the anchor and the lifeline. I will always encourage you to start your own.

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All images in this post are ©️ A. Cowen. All rights reserved.

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1. Highly recommend. You can use this site to play with a group in person (everyone with their own devices) or remotely. My inability to visualize and draw from my head makes this a challenging game, but it’s been fun.

2. I’m not proud of how much trouble I have making decisions like this. I used to just buy them all. Now I buy nothing. I am learning to be more at peace with that. I thought I might drive around and go back in and spontaneously get one, but I didn’t. The choice just wasn’t clear.