Who would be the first to put up the Christmas tree, Dad or Uncle Pat?
“C’mon, Dad, Uncle Pat already bought his tree.”
“Mom, tell Dad we want to be first this year.”
But no amount of begging could move Dad to put the tree up until a week before Christmas. That’s the way they did it when he was a boy. That was when they made their ornaments and used candles for lights. The tree was kept in an unheated room to keep it from drying out until Christmas Eve when they moved it to the dining room and lit the candles and that’s the only time they saw the tree in all its glory. Big deal. We wanted our money’s worth (Dad’s money actually) out of our tree.
In the evening I lay on the couch in the living room lit only by the colored lights on the Christmas tree. The voices of the rest of the family in the kitchen seemed far away. I suppose that as I focused on the tree in that dim quiet, I was experiencing my first time of contemplation, the indefinable peace of being lost in something greater than myself. In later years I would find peace in the silence of meditation but this still defines Peace on Earth at Christmas time for me.