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Delenn tilts her head. She’s familiar with the custom, but John’s execution baffles her. “It is…fake,” she says. Of course it would have to be an imitation: the impracticality of interplanetary arboreal transport would require the station to grow its own evergreens and every plant in the garden is in use for oxygen production or agriculture. But she imagines that some of the meaning is lost in the translation from living thing to plastic replica.
John turns on the lights and frowns; some bulbs have broken in storage and half the tree is out. He’ll have to re-light the whole thing. It’s a small tree, four feet tall, but hanging lights is the worst part of the entire process. It’s why he keeps the lights on the tree when he boxes it up at the end of the season. With a small sigh, he turns off the lights and starts to unstring the cord. “We had a real one every year at home when I was a kid. Dad, Lizzy and I would go out and pick the biggest tree we could find. Mom was always convinced one year we’d come home with one that wouldn’t fit through the front door.”
Minbar has several festivals and celebrations that include plants and flowers, but they are always freshly-cut and with purpose and prayer. False substitutions are unacceptable, unless under the most dire and extreme circumstances. “Does it mean the same as the large tree you had as a child?” She crosses her legs and leans back into the couch. John has made something called hot apple cider and she finds it unappealing. She sips at it enough to be polite.
“It doesn’t really mean anything.” John gives up the pretense of doing this with any sense of decorum and sets the tree on the floor and kneels beside it. He’s a little annoyed at his past self for stringing on the lights in such a nonsensical and knot-inducing pattern. “Early Christians incorporated the Pagan concepts of a Yule log and tree, celebrating the winter solstice and light in darkness, to make Christmas more palatable to the people they were conquering.” Bits of fake needles fall to the floor, collecting around the tree. He hopes he doesn’t need to buy an entirely new tree.
She’s read about Christmas, and even had it explained to her by an ordained priest, but it still baffles her. “So you use this symbol of deception to celebrate your holiday?” Humans only become stranger the more she learns about them.
John sits back on his heels and thinks about just buying a new tree and starting over. “When I was a kid, it was just a place to store presents,” he admits. “And I’ve had one every year since, because I’ve always had one.” He blinks at that, and turns to Delenn. “For most of us, Christmas is more a holiday about friends and family than its original meaning.”
Delenn frowns at that. Humanity’s religious history is a violent one and she finds their habit of changing meanings and dates, and stealing traditions as they see fit to be distasteful. Her exposure to Christmas has always been joyous, though, despite her concern.
He finally removes the last loop of the lights from the tree’s branches. He stands up and retrieves the two new boxes of lights he purchased in case he needed them. “Attitudes toward religion changed,” he explains, “and it’s now more of a celebration of the people we care about.” He checks the new lights to make sure they’re functional before starting to string them. They light up perfectly.
“Humanity is very odd.” Minbari traditions have remained the same for centuries, though she wonders whether some would benefit from a few slight changes.
John pauses in his work and looks at her with raised eyebrows. He can’t help himself. “There were twelve rituals before we were even allowed to kiss.”
Delenn tips her head in acknowledgement of that fact, and his patience. “If everyone has ascribed their own meaning to this holiday, what does it mean to you?”
He thinks for a moment, hesitant to give Delenn a standard answer she would see right through. He swallows and loops the lights around a branch. His hands will look like he got into a fight with a wild animal – and lost – when he’s done. “I’m grateful,” he says, “for being surrounded by such light and warmth, during what can be the coldest and darkest nights of the year.”
He isn’t talking about temperature and sunlight, and they both know it. Darkness is coming, and it may stay for a long time.
Delenn watches John work in silence, methodical in his movements and placement of lights. There are other trees around the station, and some in the garden have even been strung with similar lights. She smiles; Humanity’s determination to celebrate their traditions and holidays in this time of uncertainty is comforting. All species have winter rituals, celebrating the slow climb out of cold and death into brightness and life again, Humanity’s is simply flashier than most. She has her own plants and candles in her quarters, carefully transported from Minbar.
When he finishes, he sets the tree back on the table and turns on its lights. The tree illuminates with a soft white glow, cheerful and warm against the industrial colors of his quarters. He smiles. There’s a box of ornaments beside Delenn on the couch, a mixture of those claimed from his parents’ house and others acquired in adulthood, but those can wait.
She stands and smooths her palms over her dress. She steps around the coffee table, mug of cider now thankfully cold, and stands next to John, unsure of what comes next. He wraps his arm gently around her waist and she leans into his touch, settling her own arm around him. For a fake plant without much understandable meaning, the tree is actually quite lovely. “It is beautiful.”
John kisses the top of her head. “Thank you.”
“There is another Christmas tradition I find perplexing.”
John braces himself for the worst. Mistletoe, stockings, eggnog. “Yes?”
Delenn pulls away from him, and looks at him very seriously. “Could you explain Santa Claus?”