Where Christmas Lived

"The tree" decorated for this year. 

Most of my family won't be here. But the little crew that will be are most welcome... 

I have spent every Christmas of my life here. I didn't feel this was the year to change that... 

It's sad without Mom... sure... how could it not be. 

But atop the tree is the angel that has been there since the early 90's, and the last Christmas with my Dad. I still remember my Grandmother laughing and asking why it was red, and me responding, "Well, why not. Maybe she was a fallen angel." She laughed like I'd never seen her laugh before. 

I can still hear Maw Maw. 

Everyone loved to tease Mom every year about her tree, saying her tree was ugly. She'd staunchly support: "It's NOT ugly! There's nothing wrong with that tree!" 

I can hear Mom too. 

It became, over the course of time, an "old tree." Out of fashion as it were. You still have to string on the lights... none of those fancy fiber optics on the ends. The branches don't fold up. You put them into holes based on a color coded system which nobody remembers the code for, and the color tabs on the branches are faded beyond identification anyway. So some years, some branches may not be where they are supposed to be. But hey, whatever... 

I don't think it's an ugly tree at all... I think they just liked to tease her... to get her reaction. 

Afterall, she still had ornaments on there that were made by us from decades ago: The popsicle/yarn cross that either Robbie or Ray made in Boy Scouts... the stained glass ones I made when I was eight, a craft paper snowman made by one of us. She saved everything...Each was a memory and had a story to her. 

How could her tree be anything but beautiful...

And then there was the silver wrapping paper. 

Mom was the personnel manager at Sears. When they closed down their gift wrap section (remember when stores would wrap your gifts?), she brought home what seemed like thousands of miles of this silver wrapping paper with a winter scene etched in black... For 20 years or more that was probably the only paper you'd see under that tree. 

It was actually a shock to all of us when it ran out, and there was something other than a metallic hue under the branches.  Like it should have been foretold by Nostradamus or been on the Mayan Calendar, it was SO momentous. :-)

Those are the things I remember when I look at my Mom's conifer... and it makes me smile... I might not think of those things if I wasn't here now sitting in her chair looking at our wonderfully "ugly" tree. 

This is were Christmas always lived.

Stan Lee-- World's Most Influential Creator?

Stan Lee MAY be the most prolific and influential creator (certainly promoter) of our time?! I was just thinking about this on my flight to France today…. and I believe it’s true…

Hear me out. 

No matter where I go in the world, be it a small town in India, a mountain top in Nepal, a gathering of wooden shacks on the Amazon River… I see them… kids wearing Captain America t-shirts, kids wearing Spider-man t-shrits, Iron Man t-shirts, X-Men. Adults wearing them too…

Think about it. Who has created a world more famous than the one Stan spearheaded? 

Stephen King (or insert another contemporary writer) is a great writer, but I don’t see alot of Stephen King t-shirts in the Amazon. Madonna ( or any number of the contemporary singers), sure you may see something every now and then, but not with the outright regularity of Marvel Super -Heroes.
I can argue that I see Beatles references and Michael Jackson references often world-wide, but again, not the variety of images, or the number of unique people/characters that Marvel boasts. 

What Stan wrote, along with the art and creativity of Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko et al, and what he then presented to the world, in his undeniable infectious way, was a perfect storm. 

The question is: WHY? 

I think firstly it was that lightening in a bottle mix. Stan had the perfect gifts and gathered the perfect talents at the right time to create worlds that we could relate to, dive into,…LOVE. The characters had empathy and vulnerability.. . Something lacking in many books of the time. 

They were “super” yes, but also, they were “human.”

And then, their popularity not only spread across the US, but those same ideals resonated in some way with folks world wide. The idea of justice. The idea of people being essentially good. The idea of… a Hero... 

I truly believe in some way, despite differences in religion and politics and cultures, especially now through the movies and their wide spread appeal, these works have… I won’t say homogenized the world, because I think that’s a bad thing… but perhaps they have united many people in, I daresay, almost all parts of the world, on some level… just below the skin… giving us a a touchstone no matter where we are from…

Maybe the appeal is as simple as the idea of somehow the future being good, and some people-- our characters or group of characters--caring enough to protect what’s good about it, and about us as a species. 

There’s an optimism in that. 

The ONLY person I can think of that rivals what Stan and his team accomplished was Walt Disney!
And actually I think they were selling the same thing. 

I don’t know if Stan knew it at the time… I’m sure he did, but he was one of the world’s greatest showman. And the product he was peddling , selling as it were, to an eager public was … an endorphin rush of excitement, with a big chaser of hope.

-- Renee