Christmas Tree

While I am not a religious person, there are not many words that will bring on such an untamable flood of emotions and memories like the word ‘Christmas’. Colorful, happy and excited memories flash by in a fraction of a second, just to be chased off by family fights under the tree and a dark, droning voice telling me a million reasons why the holidays just aren’t for me (any more) …  Excitement, laughter and unbearable anticipation were replaced by stress, very tense nerves and the wish to ‘get done with it’. So what makes accepting Christmas so hard? Is it really just the commercial aspect Christmas has become? The endless Christmas carols in all the stores, trying to lure us into the Christmas spirit and to make us open up our wallets, to make financial questionable decision to ‘surprise’ our loved ones with stuff no one really needs or wants. There it is, one of the many excuses! An excuse to hide the fact, that Christmas can also be painful. It reminds us of the innocence of childhood lost, of dreams unfulfilled and the lost ability to be captured in the magic spell of a world where magic beings ride the skies in a flying sledge drawn by flying reindeers. It is also the time of the year where it becomes more apparent when life did take a wrong turn and we often feel more alone than we care to admit.
This is why I created this particular image for this week’s assignment. It shows a very special decorated Christmas tree, which is probably only visible at the second glance. It has sharp spikes that can hurt you, but the spikes are part of the cactus and the overall beauty outweighs them by far. So we can decide not to like the plant because of  it’s spikes, or we can deal with them and enjoy the overall beauty.