I set up the Christmas tree yesterday. Well, trees, actually. I’ve got the larger one that I always put up in the living room. I still use the fake one I bought the year I was diagnosed with cancer. The lights are built in, so I just need to pop the three pieces together and plug it in. My goal that year was to keep things simple and easy while I was going through chemo. I promised myself I’d never have to deal with tinsel and strings of lights again.

Fifteen years later, I’m still using it. Some of the lights don’t work, and it loses about a thousand green plastic needles each Christmas, but it holds all the handmade ornaments and memories nicely.

Each piece of the tree has two or three plugs that connect them to the other pieces. One year, Dad and I spent what felt like hours figuring out which plugs went together. We finally got it all assembled and turned it on only to discover that somehow we had bypassed the set of lights in the middle. The next year, when I pulled it out of the box, I found that dad had tied colored ribbons on the ends of each cord to show which pieces went together.

It went up very quickly this year. Possibly a bit extra quickly because I don’t have the patience to fiddle with each branch, puffing them out and bending them to fill in the gaps. That was always Dad’s job. But I’ve gotten most of the ornaments on. Downstairs, there is a little tree in the window with a couple of mini strands of lights wrapped around it. Dad always said that I should put a big tree downstairs, then a little tree in the window upstairs right above it so that it looks like one great big tree from the outside. Maybe next year.

There are two more, tiny Christmas trees - one in the library and one on a shelf by the door to my parent’s apartment. In all, four trees. You see, Dad loved Christmas trees.

He loved to simply sit in a chair and watch the lights twinkle.

The year before last, I never put up a tree. Work was hard, I was exhausted. We celebrated Christmas just fine without it. But last year, I was determined to set it up. I played Christmas music loudly, plugged in the color-coded lights, and hung every ornament I could find. Then I ran downstairs to tell dad that it was up. He came slowly up the stairs, sat down in Grammy’s old recliner, and just looked at it for a while. Then he turned to me and mouthed a ‘Thank you.” We didn’t know it would be his last Christmas with us. But we did suspect.

It’s hard losing a loved one. Letting go of someone who was wrapped tightly into the warp and weave of your life. Someone who played a part in every major event you ever experienced. It hurts to look at the lights sparkling on the tree that he loved. But there’s a joy there, too. Because more than the lights on the Christmas tree, my father loved the Christ Child.

There’s a sign on the shelf beside the tree that says, “Jesus is the reason for the season.” It’s not just the twinkling lights and hanging stockings. It’s not just the family traditions, wrapped packages, and extra chocolates. Christmas isn’t really Santa and reindeer. It’s God’s heart breaking over the broken hearts of His children and sending His son, as a baby in a manger, to make us whole and bring us Home. So, I wipe away some tears, add a few more ornaments to the tree, and place my heart back in God’s hands. It’s ok to be sad. To miss him so much… And it’s ok to feel joy as I bask in the love of a God who gave me a father who taught me to love Christmas.