by Mojgan Ghazirad

Fifteen years ago when I came to Canada as a student, I remember one of my Iranian friends who had come a few years earlier asked, “Are you going to put up a Christmas tree in your house?” We were walking together in Vancouver’s Broadway Street, ornate wreaths were attached to every light post we passed. Crimson little globes glittered in between the glabrous leaves of holly that embellished the glass vitrines of stores and coffee shops. The Christmas celebration, golden and glamorous, kept me in a state of wonderment and awe. I was new to North America and the festivities around the New Year in the Western world. And so was my daughter, age seven, who kept asking me if we were going to get her a Christmas tree where she could hang the tiny ornaments she’d received from her friends in school. “No, we will continue to enjoy from afar,” I said to my friend as we entered a cozy coffee shop to have hot cider and a cinnamon roll. He laughed out loud at my resistance and said, “Well, I’m sure you will, just like us. After a few years you’ll surrender to your kids.”

A week ago, I had the pleasure of visiting Rome for the first time in my life. Rome, with the magnificent Vatican City, seemed the most desirable city on earth to be in at Christmas time. I strolled along the narrow cobblestoned alleys flanked by hundreds of little pizzerias and pasta houses and coveted the spirit of celebration wafting its way in those tiny shops and restaurants: a waiter erecting a tall branch of spruce at the corner of a pizza house, a young girl with a red and white checkered apron placing gingerbread Babbo Natale in the display window of a gelato bar, a rosy-cheeked little girl pulling her mama’s hand for a red rain boot with a snowman on its vamp.

I remembered my kids asking about Santa and Christmas, and their questions about exchanging gifts. Every time, I came up with an answer explaining that we, as Muslims in America, do not share the same beliefs as Christians, trying to persuade them to turn their eyes away from the glittering gifts. As an Iranian, I told them about Yalda when we get together with friends on the night of December 21st, the winter solstice, and celebrate the victory of light over darkness on the longest night of the year. I clung to the celebration, arranging a colorful table with bowls of nuts, watermelon, pomegranate seeds and sweets and I let them stay awake until late at night. We read the poems of Hafiz and, most importantly, I offered them gifts that were not part of the celebration. I struggled to compensate for the presents they never received under a Christmas tree.

Last year on Christmas Eve, I was invited to a feast hosted by a friend of mine from high school who I serendipitously found after thirty-some years. When I arrived, her twin boys were playing with a remote controlled electric train that chugged under the Christmas tree and emerged clickety-clacking and whistling from the other side. They couldn’t speak Farsi and greeted me in English with perfect American accents. My friend had made fesenjoon, an Iranian dish made with walnuts and pomegranate molasses, to celebrate Christmas ‘Iranian style.’ As she ladled fesenjoon on my plate of basmati rice, she asked the same question I’d encountered fifteen years ago. “Do you put up a Christmas tree in your house?” I smiled and praised her artfulness in making such a delicacy with ingredients so scarce in America, trying to divert the conversation to the tasty side of the evening. My friend talked about a visit they had paid to the Washington National Cathedral a few days before. In St. Mary’s chapel, one of the twins had approached her and asked about the figure of Christ on the cross. “Who’s this man on the cross?” he’d simply asked. My friend had given some information about Jesus, which of course, didn’t sound exciting for a five-year-old with no religious upbringings.

After dinner, the twins gathered around the Christmas tree to play with the rattling train. As I helped to stow the remaining food in the fridge, my friend said, “Even if we were brought up in secular families, we were taught the foundations of Islam in school. At least we knew how to pray when we were in dire straits. We had something to hold on to. But my kids, they don’t even know the concept of god.”

In Rome, I saved the visit to St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City for the last day. There in the Basilica, I melted in front of the Pieta by Michelangelo. There was a peculiar gaze in Mary’s face that seemed different from all the statues that embellished every corner of that magnificent Basilica. “Ecce Homo,” she whispered in my ears. “Behold this unblemished, paragon phoenix of life.” People posed in front of the Pieta, took selfies with their mobile holders jutting out, smiling, craning their heads toward each other, hugging, pointing to Mary and Jesus in her hands. I wondered if they’d heard the words she whispered in the silence of the Basilica. The agony that was etched in Mary’s eyes was a mere reflection of the beholder’s own knowledge and past experience. Only those who knew her aching story could fathom the anguish that was carved in her outstretched arms as she held her son on her lap. I wondered if my kids would have realized what it meant to hold the weight of a complete human being in one’s hands.

At night, I walked all the way from St. Peter’s Basilica to the Spanish Steps to see Rome in her nightly beauty. On one of the landings between the flights of low steps, the city workers were erecting a grand Christmas tree. They had barred the landing with florescent warning tapes, only permitting people to pass through a narrow rim. Tourists glanced at the giant tree as they trudged up the one hundred and thirty-five steps toward the top of the hill. Rome glittered with her shiny cathedral domes and bejeweled streets. Fifteen years and I still revered Christmas from afar. I still wouldn’t erect a Christmas tree in my house, believing there should be a meaning bound to any ritual we add to our lives. What role does an emblem play for us if it’s hollowed out of the historic connotation it has? What will my children learn from me if I put up a Christmas tree in our living room? Wouldn’t their festivities be a mélange of Christmas and Yalda, amalgamated together, inane and empty of a spirit that can redeem their souls when they are lost?

Fifteen years have passed and I moved from Canada to the United States more than a decade ago. Every year, I take my kids to the Ellipse in front of the White House to show them the National Christmas Tree and the fifty decorated trees that represent each state in the country. The mirth of Christmas has seeped into our lives in a subtle, inappreciable way. We share the joy with the Christians of America at the end of the year. There is so much to learn and admire about the essence that flows through the rituals of this holy celebration. But to strip the meaning from the Christmas tree and adorn the barren branches with gilded ornaments, just to be the same as our neighbors, this is what I refuse to do. Our identity is highlighted by the differences we recognize in one another, by appreciating the agony of Mary marveling at the magnitude of her Son’s sacrifice for humanity, and by realizing the glory of a culture that celebrates the triumph of light over darkness on the longest of nights. The luminous candles on the Christmas tree remind us of the birth of a star and the ruby seeds of the pomegranate we savor at Yalda resemble the glow of life. These symbols convey a lore we believe can walk us out of darkness and lead us to the eternal bliss.

I looked down the Spanish steps at the newly erected Christmas tree and admired its halo of light. A fine snow dusted the emerald pine needles and made it glow. The Christmas tree looked beautiful from afar.

Mojgan Ghazirad is a graduate of The Mountainview Low-Residency MFA in Fiction and Nonfiction.

by David Moloney

For the last eighteen years, on the day after Thanksgiving, while still digesting and dehydrated, I sell Christmas trees at a local fresh cut tree farm: Rollie’s Farm. Owned and named after Roland “Rollie” Perron, it is the only farm left in Lowell, MA. Lowell, a former mill town turned college city, has the fourth highest population in the state. So, Rollie’s Farm is a welcomed small business. He owns fifteen acres of land and has stuffed fifteen thousand trees onto it. Rollie’s is a true throwback. The tractor ride to the fields is an old converted, pop-up camper with custom benches that serves as a wagon. Trees are sawed down by hand. We shake the trees in the rumbling Lit’l Shakee tree shaker, and rid them of pine needles, cones, abandoned bird’s nests, and papery beehives. There’s wildlife not found anywhere else in the city: a rafter of turkeys, a bald eagle, woodchucks, and evidence of a bear (scat near the tall firewood pile). The rustic farm and its bearded owner are the real draw for the thousand or so customers that return each year. They pretend, for an afternoon, they live in Vermont or upstate New Hampshire, some other part of New England not overwhelmed and tired from endless traffic and long grocery lines. City dwellers, for the most part, love being in the city, but there’s a reason why we escape north for vacations.

The extra money during holiday season is welcomed, but isn’t the sole reason we get almost the same crew back each season. We have a small twelve-man team of engineers, welders, teachers, IT salesmen and cooks. We get to dust off the long johns and escape our enclosed workspaces for frosty New England mornings, saws and sap; the hard work of hoisting big trunked trees out of wagon campers, ripping them through too-small bailers, tossing them on cars. We welcome the soreness. Infrequent contact with physical work isn’t a bad problem to have. I wouldn’t tell a person who does stone work for a living that they don’t realize how good they have it, that each morning they should prepare for a moment of enlightenment during the strenuous work, when your body performs like it was meant to.

I only see many of the guys I work with once a year for three weekends. We don’t communicate much otherwise. But there’s also something intimate in our distance. That Friday after Thanksgiving we return to the farm as if we’d been working together year round. Inside jokes carry over, hugs, ribbing, stories from workers who came and left, eccentric customers who we may banter and wonder about in years they didn’t show up for their tree. After the long day, Rollie has beers ready inside the farmhouse. We pile in, needles and all, and warm our cheeks. Over beers, we tell stories of the farm, the people we’ve lost, and the ones who are still kicking.

Rollie is going gray and there are always rumors that he plans on selling the farm so developers can cram sixty houses in place of Balsam firs. I don’t know what they’ve offered him, but I can imagine it’d be enough to cover anything he’ll make from selling Christmas trees for the rest of his life. But he values hard work, and I don’t think he can leave it.

When I first started working for him at fifteen years old, I wanted to prove I could make it on the farm. I picked corn with him at 5:30 am and then worked my shift at the vegetable stand later in the day. For a week, I took the city bus to the outer edge of Lowell, changed in the barn, and built a greenhouse. I mowed in the fields to make room for seedlings, and then planted rows of Corkbark Firs with Rollie. He wasn’t talkative, the money wasn’t great, and the work was repetitive and strenuous, but I kept coming back. I hadn’t grown up with knowledge of tools or how to work with my hands. Rollie offered a different kind of place for me. There was openness, dirt under my nails, and certain rigidness in his criticism. He wouldn’t get angry or yell. He would just tell me I was tying tomato plants wrong. Then he’d show me. Then he’d make me tie them right. It was what a fifteen-year-old boy needed, or at least what I needed. Boys won’t listen to their fathers the same way they will a coach or boss or teacher.

If I had to poll the work crew, I imagine they’d all have a similar reason for working for Rollie. Even as we age, we still yearn for rusty tractors, cut-your-own tree farms, cash only payments, offline friends,a place where you don’t feel the connected weight of the world. And there’s promising news: Rollie just ordered a thousand more seedlings.

David Moloney is a graduate of The Mountainview Low-Residency MFA in Fiction and Nonfiction. He currently teaches writing at UMASS Lowell and Southern New Hampshire University.