Mori Mori Christmas
By John Gathright
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モリーモリークリスマス
毎年、クリスマスの一週間前に、筆者の家族と仲間たちは、森への感謝を込めてもう一つのお祝いをします。あたりに響くのは「メリークリスマス」ならぬ「モリー(森)クリスマス」の叫び声。まず木々の手入れを済ませると、次は木登りサンタの登場です。一同はサンタが持ってきたポプコーンや木の実を周囲の枝につるします。小鳥や動物はこれで厳しい冬を生き抜いていくでしょう。
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Christmas at the Miso Barrel Tree House is not your usual tin-and-tinsel affair. For one thing, we lease our mountain from an ancient Buddhist temple and have promised not to place Christmas lights and other Christmas decorations on the outside of our home. At first we feared this would put a wet blanket on our Christmas celebrations, but in fact, it opened a door to a world of fun and original Christmas traditions.
When you become a father you are forgiven for acting like a kid. When you live in a tree house you are forgiven for thinking outside the box. You are allowed to create your own Christmas traditions, and that is how we started celebrating Mori Mori Christmas.
"Mori," meaning forest in Japanese, has replaced the "merry" of "Merry Christmas" and we love it that way. We get to celebrate Merry Merry Christmas on Dec. 25, and Mori Mori Christmas a week before. What started out as our own family tradition has grown to be shared by many families in the annual Fun Forest Mori Mori Christmas held in Gifu Prefecture.
For the tree-dwelling Gathright family and their tree-loving friends, Mori Mori Christmas is a way of thanking the wonderful, beautiful trees that give us so many gifts throughout the year. They shower us with life-giving oxygen, they give us shade and they protect us from the elements. In return, we give them our Sleeping Tree Gifts.
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| ホットチョコレートを飲み、クッキーを食べながら皆でツリーの飾りを用意するのも、モリーモリークリスマスの楽しみにの一つだ。 |
We find trees that are in need of loving care, we put on our tree-climbing gear, and cut off all the dead and decaying branches. The children loosen up the soil around the roots and give the trees lots of natural fertilizer by covering their roots with leaves and dried branches. We then lean a "Sleeping Tree" sign against their trunks. There is a lot of traffic in parts of our forest so we re-route the paths so that the trees are not disturbed and can rest quietly and calmly through the winter.
While some trees are put to sleep, others are woken by the squeals of delight and joyful dancing of little children in anticipation of Treetop Santa. The same jolly old man that can come down chimneys with a single bound is an expert treetop dancer. Nimble and quick, Treetop Santa brings gifts to birds and animals in the forests. From the sack on his back he delivers popcorn, dried berries, small fruits, peanut butter, and biodegradable string.
We too make small gifts for the songbirds and the small creatures of the forest - little things to help them through the cold, hard winter. We string peanut-butter pine cones and popcorn from tree branches. Hanging fruits and berries from otherwise barren branches are our way of sharing our joy with the forests.
In the true spirit of Christmas we all have a jolly time sipping hot chocolate and nibbling Christmas cookies while we string up the presents in the forest. Last year, some of the birds couldn't wait for us to leave and like little children who come running to open their Christmas presents early on Christmas morning, they started to nibble on the gifts before we had even left the forest.
Finally Mori Mori Christmas would not be complete without a Christmas story read under the branches of a kind and gentle oak. In our Tree Circle, we share traditional Christmas stories as well as our own original tree stories. It is our ways of sharing our gratitude to nature and our Earth.
Mori Mori Christmas celebrates peace, love, giving and sharing in a non-religious way. Above all, it reminds us that the gift of giving is indeed one of the best gifts we can ever receive.
Shukan ST: Dec. 10, 2004
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