Gifts from Nature
“I want to shed my waste with quiet reverence like the pine…
Keep me mindful of what I take into my home, the items brought to substitute for real living … Help me slowly to surrender all excess.”
Gunilla Norris, Being Home
This season, I’ve invited Nature into my home for the holidays. But first, like the pine tree, I needed to shed what no longer serves me.
Right after Thanksgiving, I went through all my old Christmas decorations – boxes and boxes of them – to determine which ones, in Marie Kondo’s famous words, “sparked joy.” Less than a dozen of them did. Most of these decorations were given to me as gifts. I’d saved them for decades, rarely displaying them.
Now, what kind of life is that for a gift, to be stored in a dark box for years, or brought out half-heartedly, from a sense of obligation? This felt wasteful.
It was time to free these gifts – they looked brand-new and would likely delight someone else. The snowman candle holders, Santa centerpieces, silk poinsettias, ceramic Victorian village, candy cane striped bowls, Mr. and Mrs. Claus salt and pepper shakers, and yards of artificial garlands. I blessed each one and collectively wished them Godspeed.
I intentionally donated these items to our local help center in plenty of time for them to be scooped up for the current holiday season. And as I piled the decorations into the trunk of my husband’s car for him to deliver, I felt a bit like Mrs. Claus helping Santa load his sleigh. This felt joyful.
Next, I considered where to find fragrant evergreens to decorate my home. I wanted to use living greenery but minimize harm to the trees from which they came.
There’s something magical about setting intentions; it makes us more attentive and receptive.
Without the use of pruning shears, a bounty of beautiful boughs and pinecones began showing up on my daily walk through the woods and along the greenway. Just lying on the ground waiting for me. I began wearing my backpack, so I could more easily carry these cast-offs home. After a windy, sleety day, I collected more than a dozen gorgeous long-needle fir branches, many of them with their lovely pinecones still attached. And with perfect timing, the town’s maintenance crew trimmed the cedars in the public park behind our house, littering our backyard with fresh, scented boughs!
I also scavenged a variety of cuttings from the bottom of a bin of Christmas wreaths at Costco, and the young man working at the Lowes’ tree lot was more than happy to bestow me with an armful of the bottom branches he’d sawed off sold trees. The only thing I cut myself was a few holly and magnolia branches that overhung onto our property from neighboring trees.
As I admire my harvest, I appreciate each distinctive type of greenery. Infinite variations… long needles, short needles, some prickly and stiff, others soft, graceful, filigreed. Some are aromatic, others sticky with sap; all individual in character. The magnolia brings Southern charm, and the holly leaves look like they’ve been lacquered. Their colors stretch across an impossibly wide spectrum of green.
The way the evergreens came to me feels like a gift from Nature, which I’ll honor with gratitude. And once the boughs turn dry and their needles begin to drop, I will close the circle and return them to the Earth for composting, with thanks.
“We understand that receiving a gift incurs a responsibility to give a gift in return. The next step in our cultural evolution, if we are to persist as a species on this beautiful planet, is to expand our protocols for gratitude to the living Earth. Gratitude is most powerful as a response to the Earth because it provides an opening to reciprocity, to the act of giving back.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer, Returning the Gift, Minding Nature Journal
