Family Tree

I started to write this weeks ago - so this is a little past tense.   (Oh! Post 151!!)

It’s Christmas time again, so I’ve started listening to Christmas music. Without fail, I find a song that touches my heart and makes me cry. This year I stumbled across Dave Barnes’s song “Family Tree” and it very nearly made me cry.  So, here are the lyrics mixed in with my personal reactions to them.

"Family Tree" by Dave Barnes

The family car, we barely fit 
Christmas time had come again 
Bundled up to fight the freeze 
Picking out the family tree 

We’d decorate with clumsy hands 
In hope that Santa comes again 
And in the morning wake to see 
Gifts beneath the family tree 

As I listen to these lyrics I remember December nights as a family, Dad would make eggnog and we would get out the decorations and hang them on our tree. I also remember sometimes Mom would move decorations around to make the tree look more even, or to move breakable ones up higher. I remember many Christmases of my childhood and those memories bring a smile to my face.

And I don’t know where I’m going, but I do know who’ll I’ll be 
These memories and names like leaves all hang on us 
The family tree 

I think these lyrics are some of the most powerful in the song. I don’t know where I’m going – I have no idea where God is taking me in this life, but I do know who I am, I know my identity. And a lot of how I know that is reviled by people and memories.

We’re older now, we all have changed 
But we all laugh at the same old things 
We’ll spend the night with memories 
Gathered ‘round the family tree 

Dude will never live down one Christmas dinner where we were talking about dinosaurs and Napoleon’s big ego he said in an outrageous French accent “I am Napoleon! I keeled zee donosaurz!” Every Christmas we bring it up and laugh. There’s a lot of traditions that have been around since my childhood that we always look forward to. It is a time where we can talk about the past and spend an evening around the tree talking about memories.

We're so much more than blood 
We're more than names 
We're bound by bonds that only God sustains 

But, this time of year 
We gather here 
And I always know I'm home 

It’s not just coming home to be with Mom and Dad. There are other people that I am not related to by blood that are just as important for me to see as my own family is. It is home – even if my room at my parents’ house looks exactly the same as it did while I was in high school.

There are voices now 
Where silence was 
The subtle signs of growing up 
Where one is born another leaves 
Branches on the family tree 

I think of two things as I listen to this the last stanza. First of all my brothers and I are at the stages of our lives where we are bringing significant others home for Christmas – and our family as a whole is beginning to bring home babies (little cousins are awesome!!). This is a time where our family is growing. But I also look and think how many Christmases do I have left with my grandparents? And looking at my boyfriend’s family – is this the last Christmas he will have with his dad? But also to remember that those who are gone are always in our hearts and they leave those branches on the tree, their legacy doesn’t die when their life on the earth is gone. It is important to remember that.