Speaker 1: The video you're about to see is a short video
that I made four years ago on the kind of
dance of decorating the Christmas tree. It's wild because I
made this video the very first few weeks after I
had moved into our new home after our house was
flooded in twenty nineteen, and so it was a particularly
touching moment because we redecorated our Christmas tree in our
home again, which was a big deal for our family.
Speaker 2: Every year we would do that. And so please enjoy.
This is Jonathan fjel Welcome to the symbolic world.
Speaker 1: So the activity of decorating a Christmas tree is one
which most families will engage in during you know, the
up upcoming towards Christmas. You know, when you have young kids,
it's actually the most fun. Mom My kids are getting
a little older and they're a little blase about decorating.
Speaker 2: The Christmas tree.
Speaker 1: But when your kids are you know, like six, seven,
eight around that age, it's it's a blast to decorate
the Christmas tree together. And it's also kind of shows
you how reality works, and you you see this kind
of balance that needs to come about between order and
let's say heaven and earth between order and improvisation, between
the regular and the irregular. And so I've already talked
about the symbolism of the Christmas tree per se. You
can check that out if you're interested in it. Here
it's mostly about how the actual decorating of the tree,
and so especially if you do that as a family,
you really get that experience. And so you can imagine,
for example, because you've seen Christmas trees, you know, all
the time, and you've seen beautiful Christmas trees, and you've
seen ugly Christmas trees, and what makes a Christmas tree
beautiful and what.
Speaker 2: Makes it off somehow?
Speaker 1: And we've all had that experience of seeing a Christmas
tree which is off, and often it's usually off because
it looks too chaotic, where all the ornaments don't fit together,
all the ornaments are, there's too much space between the ornaments,
there's too much there's some places where they're too close together,
other places where there's too much space, where from one
side it looks really nice, but then when you kind
of turn you see that it doesn't look very good
from the other side. And so that is obviously one
version of what makes the Christmas tree not look so nice.
There's also the possibility of a Christmas tree being too perfect,
you know, of everything being lined up perfectly and everything,
you know, you can imagine that you can almost see
bands in it coming down of ornaments, you know, you
see that sometimes and stores they can push that too much.
But you definitely don't want something like that for your
home Christmas tree because there is a lacking of homey feeling,
like you're lacking that sense of.
Speaker 2: Comfort.
Speaker 1: You could say that comes from a somewhat a a
giving in to idiosyncrasy, you know, And so you can imagine,
for example, a Christmas tree that only has just glass
balls and they're all perfect, and they all kind of
come down, and you don't want that. So the Christmas
tree ends up being a balance between the different aspects
of the you know, the very shiny glass ball ornament,
but then also the ribbon which goes around the tree,
and the ribbon which goes around the tree. You know,
if it's too perfect, it won't look right. You have
to find that balance, and the balance often happens in
a very interesting way as you're actually doing it. And
so when you start and you start putting ornaments in
the tree, you start to create patterns, and the patterns
kind of reveal themselves as you're decorating it. You put
up an ornament here, and then you realize that if
you have several ornaments that are the same, you don't
want the next ornament to be too close to that one,
but you don't also want it to be too far.
So you find a space that's kind of close enough,
far enough, not on the same line, but not too far,
and then you kind of create this pattern which is
which is orderly but also is organic at the same time.
Then you have another ornament that you come and you
want to now add to that one that you had
put in before.
Speaker 2: You start to add the.
Speaker 1: Ornament, and then you start to want to balance it
out with the ornament which is already there, So you
end up creating a kind of balancing act between what
is already there and what is added what is new.
Speaker 2: You want it to fit in.
Speaker 1: You don't want it to stand out so much that
it calls attention to itself completely.
Speaker 2: You want the new.
Speaker 1: Ornament that now you're adding to what's already there to
be in a harmonious hole with the others, but also
not completely vanished and still have a say, still have
something which makes it, which makes you able to see it,
and so you put on the ornaments. And when you're
doing it together, this is when it becomes very fascinating
because it also becomes an exercise in family unity, you know,
because people have a slightly different way of understanding how
let's say balanced or how imbalanced, how orderly or how
improvisational the tree has to look, and also even the
level of attention that you're wanting to put into the tree.
And so you'll have someone who will come in and
just put a few put the ornaments, no matter where
they are, and they think it's fine, like they think
it's it's okay that way.
Speaker 2: It's not. You know, it's good enough, you could say.
Speaker 1: And then for someone else, you know, they might want
to spend, you know, hours and hours fiddling with each
ornament in order to make it absolutely perfect. And when
you're dealing with several people, you also you have to
be careful. You have to find the same balance that's
in the Christmas tree, you have to find among the
people that are decorating the tree as well, because if
the person who wants too perfect a Christmas tree nitpicks
too much and keeps taking the ornaments that other people
are placing in the tree and replacing them. At some
point the friction is going to start to appear. And
the same goes the other way. If the person who
just wants to get it over with move onto something
else just throws them in there and then just wants
to leave, they will also be they'll also prick the
person who cares about it more and wants the Christmas
tree to be beautiful.
Speaker 2: And so what you end up.
Speaker 1: Seeing is this dance between the different people where someone
will put an ornament somewhere and then maybe someone else
will have a small reaction which is like, maybe it
doesn't go there, and so you end up moving it
a little bit, and you know, maybe once in a while,
when someone's not looking, you'll take the ornament that they
put and then you'll just change the place of where
it is, you know.
Speaker 2: And that is really a really.
Speaker 1: A representation of just how the world lays itself out,
you know, because the patterns of the world have to
adapt themselves to the circumstance in which they're manifesting manifesting themselves,
and so you know, whatever pattern it is, whether it's
a law, whether it's a you know, an aesthetic pattern,
like you know, the building of a house. You want
to build a house a certain way, but you have
to take into account, you know, the place where you are.
You have to take into account the different aspects, whether
there's a tree there, whether the other houses what they
look like, and so people in a normal society, people
end up creating this balance between you could say, order
and improvisation or order in particularity. That is what makes traditional cities,
like an old medieval town, that's what makes them so
beautiful because they operate on a longer scale in the
same way that a good Christmas tree is decorated, which
is proposition and then modification, you know, and then someone
will add another house, you know, related to the one
that's there. Then maybe even that first house at some
point will change, will be changed in order to kind
of fit or to adapt itself to to what is happening,
you know, in other places of this city.
Speaker 2: And so that is why the Christmas.
Speaker 1: Tree remains a very nice ritual that you can practice
as a family, that you can practice together with your kids.
Speaker 2: To kind of see.
Speaker 1: You can almost guess what a family's culture is. If
you could watch them, probably not just almost. You definitely
can guess a culture's family's culture if you watch them
decorated Christmas tree, both in terms of how they interact
while they're doing it and then ultimately the final result
at what it would look like. Will it look like
something that no one cares about? Will it look like
something that is straight out of a magazine, so perfect
that it's almost doesn't feel like it should be in
a in a home, you know, And then and all
the way in between that you'll find you'll find a
pattern of manifestations. So your Christmas tree could really be
an image of your family and your family's capacity to
work together and to also be, let's say, a to
participate in the celebration of Christmas, and celebration happens that
way as well. There's something about celebration which is both
a looking up towards the same goal, the same purpose,
the thing which unites us, but also the capacity to
express some idiosyncrasy together as we're celebrating. And so it
really is something like a dance, you know, this ebb
and flow between the particularity of the relationship of the dancers,
the music and the tempo and the beat which is
imposing a certain order, and in that magic is where
you find the world. And so I hope everybody you
all had a merry Christmas. Christ is born, glorify him.
I wish you also a happy New Year. I'm looking
forward to twenty twenty one despite our fear of what's
on the horizon.
Speaker 2: So thanks and I'll talk to you very soon.
Speaker 3: Hello there, Well, this is Martin Shaw and I'm afraid
whatever you had planned for January scrap it. I am
returning to Symbolic World gleefully with one of the great
stories of our time, the Epic of Passable, the story
of the Holy Grail itself. Over five nights, I will
be telling the tale. These will not be dry lectures
or PowerPoint presentations. This will be wild, old philosophical storytelling
in its deepest dimensions. It is life changing stuff, this story.
I've written a book about it, I've been studying it
for twenty years. I've told it all over the world,
but I have not shared it with you. I've not
shared it with Symbolic World. So what else would you
want to do in the great wintering time but to
sit at the feet of this wonderful story and let
me be your guide. I'll see you there.
Speaker 1: If you enjoy these videos and podcasts, please go to
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