This past weekend I put away our Christmas tree and decorations. We’ve had the same tree for the past 5 years- a Monroe artificial Christmas tree, with embedded white lights. The price, $39.99, is still boldly displayed in white on the box. My husband, then boyfriend, surprised me by buying and setting up the tree one day before I came home. He was so proud of his purchase, and it was a nice gesture, although I wished we could have chosen the tree together. I would have chosen one with multicolored lights. This year, I finally took an initiative and bought some multi-colored lights to add to the tree. Even before this addition, however, I was proud of our tree. There are a lot of stupid things in this country, and growing trees so that they can be cut down and hauled to a lot, then hauled to someone’s home, only to be set on a curb and hauled away again by trash or recycling trucks a few weeks later strikes me as not only an indignity to the tree, but a huge carbon footprint. Trees, in my opinion, should grow to their majestic selves, not be stymied and commercially carved to fit a commercial ideal. (Yes, they do trim trees to get that A- frame shape.) Fortunately, my husband and I are on the same page about this. But what struck me anew this year, as I put away our Christmas accoutrements, is how much we owe our Christmas… to China. Yes, that land, which forbids freedom of religion, is the vehicle by which this holy day becomes a commercial circus. There would be no Christmas without China, or more truthfully, Chinese laborers. Needless to say, our tree was made in China. That I knew five years ago. But what really made an impact occurred while I was putting away the multi-colored lights. My husband thought it was crazy, but I actually wanted to put the lights back in their original packaging rather than wrapping it in a tangled ball. I would rather spend time now to avoid detangling it later.
I put all the 140 lights into their individual casings. I figure it took about 30 minutes, not including breaks, to put it all back together. My fingers hurt and my back was aggravated. It was then that I thought about the people who assembled these lights in China, and how small their hands would have to be to be able to do this efficiently, and how tedious this repetitive task must be. No, I didn’t think about the Chinese while I was decorating the tree. I thought about them when I was painstakingly putting the decorations away. And so, a toast, to the Chinese. To the anonymous Chinese person who put together my lights, and to whom we as a country owe a debt of gratitude for making our holidays affordable. What must the Chinese think about this holiday as they toil away on the assembly line? These days, Santa and his elves are located… in China. The people that didn’t ask for this holiday unwillingly became the catalysts that made it happen.
