Norma Olizon-Chikiamco is co-founder and editor in chief of Food magazine. A journalism graduate, she studied at the Berlin International Institute for Journalism and Syracuse University, New York. Her awards include a Palanca for her short story "Pan de Sal Saves the Day," an Outstanding Journalism Award from the Australian-New Zealand Chamber of Commerce, and a National Book Award for The Best of Food Magazine Cookbook. She and husband Calixto Chikiamco have two children, Pia and Clarissa.
The book I love the most is one that made me cry from the first page to the last. Even while I was just browsing through it in the bookstore, it was already tugging at my heartstrings and I had to put it down before my tears began to smear the pages. Every December, when I reread it, I get misty-eyed all over again.
The book’s simple title is both appropriate and deceptive. Written by Julie Salamon, with illustrations by Jill Weber, it is called The Christmas Tree. Though it may sound generic, the book unfolds in simple yet elegant prose, and is a poignant tale of one man whose perspective is forever altered by a tree and the aging nun who cared for it.
This man is a gardener whose duty it is every year to look for the perfect Christmas tree that’s to be displayed at Rockefeller Center. When he finally finds the perfect tree one bright spring day, he discovers that the nun who owns it is reluctant to part with it as it has been her friend since childhood. In the process of trying to persuade her to give up the tree, an unlikely friendship develops between Jesse King, a tough, cynical, worldly wise New Yorker, and Sister Anthony, a gentle nun who grew up in the sheltered walls of a New Jersey convent after she was orphaned.
Like Sister Anthony, I spent part of my growing-up years in a convent. I was 12 years old and my sister 16 when our parents brought us to study in a boarding school run by Belgian nuns. Ironically, the school where we had been studying was just a five-minute drive from home, yet the boarding school to which they brought us was six hours away by car.
Though I was by no means an orphan, I felt in many ways like the little girl Anna when she first sets foot in Brush Creek, the New Jersey convent that is to be her home. Like Anna, I felt lost during the first days of school. Though my sister was with me, she was much older and naturally gravitated to a different crowd. It took a while before I could form real friendships. Being 12 years old, I couldn’t decide where I would fit in, partly because I also couldn’t decide whether I was still a child or already an adolescent. The times when I felt like a child, I would join the younger girls in playing kickball and going horseback riding. But then I’d worry that I was being too childish, and would try to join the older girls, only to be dismissed for not being mature enough to be part of their crowd.
There is an incident in the book where Anna, who lived in an orphanage before she was brought to the convent, proudly shows off the leaves and bark that she and her father had collected before he died. But instead of admiring her collection, a girl named Doreen sneers at it. Until then Anna had known only the loving care of her father and of a faithful neighbor named Mrs. Ellis. This incident is her first realization that not everyone in this world is kind-hearted, an awakening I myself experienced many years ago. Just because I think something is precious and valuable, it doesn’t necessarily mean that other people think so too. One little girl’s treasure could be another little girl’s trash, and I’ve seen this happen in various heartbreaking situations, not only in my own life, but in others’ too.
There are other ways in which I can relate to Anna, the little girl who later becomes Sister Anthony. One time, Anna loses her cherished satchel, the one with all the leaves and bark her father had collected, and she spends days looking for it. It is only after she prays to St. Anthony that she finds it, beneath a patch of ferns near a winding path that leads to a creek. I can no longer count the number of times I’ve lost something and expected St. Anthony to redeem it for me. People may scoff at the thought, but St. Anthony is indeed the patron saint of lost things. With only one or two exceptions, he has always helped me locate the things I’ve misplaced. Once, while on a tour in the US, I suddenly discovered that I had lost my camera. It was just an inexpensive camera, but it was very precious to me as it had been given by my grandfather. I looked on the seat of the tour bus. Nothing. I searched in my handbag. Nothing. I prayed and prayed to St. Anthony, asking him to come to my rescue, just as he always had. Then when I had almost given up, I found the camera beneath one of the seats on the bus. The joy I felt must have been equal to what Anna felt when she found the beloved satchel that had once belonged to her father.
Unlike Anna, however, I didn’t become a nun after graduation. Instead I became a journalist, and this is where I can relate to Jesse King, the narrator and antagonist in the book. Jesse, the skeptical world-weary gardener who thinks finding the perfect Christmas tree must be the hardest job in the world. Jesse, who always finds a reason to gripe about everything under the New York sun. Jesse, who in the beginning of the story warns that he’s not a sentimental man, but who nevertheless starts crying when the lights on the tree are finally turned on at Rockefeller Center.
Like Jesse, I sometimes feel put upon. I complain too much and appreciate too little. Having seen so much of this world, I tend to be dismissive and irreverent. But like Jesse I, too, cried when Sister Anthony’s eyes light up at the sight of her tree brightening the streets of Manhattan. Was I perhaps remembering something I had long ago set aside in a forgotten corner of my soul?
At the end, when Jesse goes out to look for his next Christmas tree, he is a changed man, no longer sullen and brooding. Because of a simple nun and the tree she loved, he finds new joy in his work and rediscovers his inner child. If only there were more Sister Anthonys in this world to enlighten the Jesse Kings among us.
Though The Christmas Tree has become my favorite book, I didn’t buy it at first because I thought it was rather expensive. But on Christmas Day that year, I found the book underneath my own Christmas tree. My children had given it to me as a present with the dedication: "Don’t cry too much when you read this book, Mom."
But, of course, I cried, from the first page to the last, just as I now do every December, whenever I reread my favorite book.