Sunday Griot: The Christmas Totem

A couple of years ago my wife and I took a cruise to Alaska. One of our stops was the Totem Heritage Park in the village of Saxman, near Ketchikan. The guide told us the stories behind some of the totem poles displayed there, including one depicting Abraham Lincoln’s Secretary of State, William Seward. Seward was of course the man who negotiated the purchase of Alaska for the United States, and after the purchase was complete he went to Alaska to see what he’d bought. The natives of Tongass Island carved a totem pole in his honor and threw a potlatch for him. Now when the Tlingits throw a potlatch for you, they have a big feast and give you lots of gifts, and then they expect you to return the favor by throwing a potlatch for them. When Seward didn’t reciprocate, they took down the totem pole with his likeness on it, painted his face red as a sign of shame, and put it back up!

Every totem pole is supposed to tell a story, whether it’s the story of how Raven tricked the world into being, or the genealogy of a great chief, or just the story of an untrustworthy government official.

My wife and granddaughter put up our Christmas tree a couple of days ago while I was at work, and it’s finally starting to feel like Christmas. Sitting in the front room, looking at the tree with its lights and ornaments, I had the thought that a good Christmas tree, like a good totem pole, should tell you a story.

When I look at the Christmas trees downtown or at the mall or at other commercial establishments, they’re pretty, but they don’t tell me anything. They look like they were designed by someone with an MBA in Marketing who is more interested in getting you into the store and making you forget how much you hate holiday crowds long enough to part with some of your money than in creating any real holiday spirit.

Now take a look at our Christmas tree. We can start at the bottom, with a tree skirt my father-in-law crocheted. He had rheumatic fever as a child and wasn’t able to go outside and get in trouble with the other kids, so his grandmother taught him how to crochet. Up until shortly before his death he spent most evenings relaxing in front of the TV, happily crocheting tablecloths, bedspreads, and doilies. It may seem a little out of character for a guy who was built like a bear (a small black bear, not a grizzly, but a bear nonetheless) who looked more like the mechanic and welder he was than a crocheter, but that was Alvin, and now that he’s gone we’re glad to have this reminder of him.

Just atop the tree skirt are a couple of two-foot-tall Victorian-style Santas. Actually, these gentlemen look more like Father Christmas than Santa Claus. They look like they’ve stepped off of a card that says “Merry Christmas 1898.” One is clad in green rather than red. They carry walking staffs and small bags with teddy bears and candy canes poking out of them. They look like the kind of St. Nicholas who would trudge through the snow to deliver presents rather than flying around in a sleigh. If you knew me you might think they’re some kind of reaction against the over-exposed rotund gentleman familiar from Thomas Nast cartoons and Coca-Cola ads, but they’re not really. I just like the look of the old style Santas. They go well with some of the other ornaments on the tree, like the pennyfarthing bike.

Looking around the tree, there are ornaments of every description, and most of them have a story behind them. Over here is a 101 Dalmatians we bought at a McDonalds when they were promoting the Glenn Close live-action version of the film. Next to it is an ornament I bought in a set from the Quality Paperback Book Club because it reminded me of similar ornaments we had on the tree when I was young. Over there, next to the black ballerina we bought the last time we went to see The Nutcracker at the Pacific Northwest Ballet because it reminded us of our granddaughter, is a handblown Egyptian ornament we picked up when the Royal British Columbia Museum in Victoria hosted an exhibit of Egyptian antiquities. There’s a Chuck Jones coyote chasing the Roadrunner around a decorated cactus. There’s Mickey Mouse and Peter Pan and Eeyore and other Disney figures my daughter loves, admiring packages or tangled up in a sting of lights. The garland of origami boxes stretches twice around the tree now. My wife’s been folding the boxes out of two-inch paper squares for over ten years now and stringing them together to make the garland.

And at the very top of the tree, looking down on the nativity scene on the bench in front of the TV, is the angel. Not a spire, not a star, but a Christmas angel. It’s a Chrstmas tree, after all, and while we have caroler ornaments and angels playing psaltries and a Santa Claus or two, it wouldn’t do to ignore the Story that started it all.

Every year the tree changes a little as new ornaments are added and old ones are stored away because we don’t have room for them anymore. This year a Radko blown-glass Yosemite Sam that was one of my wife’s favorites decided to take a dive off the tree, with predictable results. Radko ornaments are meant to be pretty, not to survive a four foot drop. We added a two-inch plastic icicle. It’s not much, but when my granddaughter was finished Christmas shopping with money she’d saved from her allowance, she had one dollar left and bought her first ornament with it. Someday we hope it will be part of her family’s Christmas totem.

What our tree lacks in coordinated decoration, it makes up in personality. There isn’t another tree like it anywhere in the world, and we like it that way. It’s the closest thing our family has to a totem pole. It tells our family’s story like no diary, no document, nothing else in this world ever could, because we’ve written it ourselves, light by light, ornament by ornament.