The Savage Shaman

Full Confession: This year we bought a tree. You read that right: BOUGHT a Christmas tree. From the store. $65.

Correction: I didn’t buy the tree, my partner did. And this was a HUGE concession, in the spirit of fairness and holiday cheer, and finally just not wanting to argue about a stupid tree anymore. So technically, HE bought the tree.

Growing up, however, we harvested our trees in the wild, and this was one of my earliest introductions to the sacredness of the seasons, the cycles of life, and honoring death. My mother was the High Priestess of our local coven, and the holy days of the year marked seasonal transitions not just for our family, but for our community. My earliest memories were of twisting flower wreath crowns and dancing naked around a bonfire. (Yes, I was THAT kid, you know—the kid who never likes to wear clothes? Some things never change lol!)

This is how I was raised, and how I have strived to raise my own children for the past several years:

Every winter, one special pine tree is selected from the woods on our property in the Colorado Rockies for the annual ritual sacrifice and honoring. We live with the trees and we depend on them for protection, for shelter, for food and medicine. The ritual sacrifice of the Yule Tree is a special occasion to remember our sacred connection to the trees, to make offerings and receive a gift from the forest, and to bring balance, harmony and peace to our environment.

Except this year.

This year we bought a tree.

Don’t get me wrong, it is a beautiful tree. And it was selected with expert care, and “tree shopping” was an initiation for my kids all its own.

This is a tradition all its own, and I honor the discernment and positive aspirations that accompany these sorts of outings. I also recognize the irresistible and bittersweet nostalgia that the winter months invoke, that passionate pull on our heartstrings for tradition, lineage, family, belonging. That same nostalgic passion also provokes lively discussions—if not full-blown heated debates—over the most trifling of details like whether to cut a tree or buy one. And this year, I finally surrendered.

The balsam fir that came into our living room in December was perfectly symmetrical, exactly ten feet tall, full enough that you couldn’t see the trunk between the bushy boughs, and it filled our home with an intoxicating perfume. We enacted the bacchanalian ritual of toasting our eggnog while throwing tinsel and singing along with 1950’s era Christmas classics. Vivid visions danced before our eyes under the glow of its lights, intoxicated by its scent. We honored and worshipped the fully decorated tree, and my children gasped with wonder at the piles of ribbon and wrapping paper that magically appeared underneath the hallowed totem on Christmas morning.

Yes, this tree was honored. And yet I still felt something was missing. Was this a nagging nostalgia, or a yearning for something deeper? For me, the tree is more than a nostalgic ritual, it is a sacred enactment of the sacrifice of solstice: the seasonal turning when the sun god surrenders to the darkness. While this is the simplest possible retelling, it is the more ancient origin of the Solstice tree. Other interpretations include the ritual sacrifice of the Green Man, the Dancing God, etc.

There is yet one tree that does not die in the winter, however, and that is the evergreen pine. Hence our fascination and worship of this arbre: while it does in fact go dormant, its leaves retain their various shades of green (which I never fully appreciated before actually living in a pine forest, the amazing diversity of color, bark, leaf distribution and length, and scent of the wondrous pine tree)! Such a being is indeed worthy of our worship.

So why cut one down? Well, if you needed one more reason, here it is: for us forest-dwellers, we are also the keepers of the forest. It is our responsibility to manage the forest, to maintain balance between forest canopy and forest floor, to step mindfully where the soil needs compacted and to tread lightly where the soil needs air. We practice controlled annual burns which renew the soil, and we practice gentle, mindful, and gracious thinning of the forest when needed. When we humans remember to live in harmony with nature in this way, we re-become the co-creators of paradise on Earth. When we forget, nature reminds us with her wrath.

And so, it is more than nostalgia that calls me out to the woods, to tend my forest, to ask which tree would like to be sacrificed, and to listen long and quiet for their reply. It is a deeper calling to participate in the cycles of life which make us all whole, and holy, and which recognizes everything as living, and dynamic, and interconnected. All that lives must die, and one day, I too, will be cut down, and honored for a while, and then returned to the soil.

Since I didn’t get my ritual sacrifice this year, I was inspired to bring more to the other side of the solstice tradition: the ceremonial “de-decorating”, final farewells, and burial of our beloved balsam fir.

Do this next time you’re saying farewell to a beloved friend: dress them beautifully with decorations and surround them with light and love, speak your gratitude aloud as you touch them with reverence, bring them to their final resting place and offer tobacco, consecrated blood, and wine; drum and sing and dance for joy and life and connection.

This is not the end

Trim the dead branches from the trunk, and on Beltane tie ribbons around the top and dance around the maypole, and finally on the Summer Solstice burn the ribbon-wrapped spine of your sacred Yule tree in a ceremonial bonfire. These are the old ways which renew us again and again, refreshing our joi de vivre, and our raison d’etre.

Keep it sacred, y’all.