I was walking down the street, a few days after New Years, and I saw tons of discarded Christmas trees on the curb. It occurred to me that just a few days ago, these trees were precious object. People went to a lot of work to buy their trees, hurl them home, set them up and lovingly decorate them. For a few weeks they were assigned such deep meaning — they were about family, celebration, traditions and joy.  Now, they are trash.

I couldn’t help but start thinking about my own body, it is something I work so hard to shape and decorate, with the workouts, the clothes, shoes and jewelry. I am just like a perfectly decorated Christmas tree. I give my body so much meaning — my body is me/ I am my body; my sense of self and this body of mine are totally intertwined.  But what happens when my season passes? What happens when, like all trees I rot, decay, break down?

The truth is a Christmas tree is just like every other tree in the forest. It is not special, it has no deep hidden meaning lurking inside it. Its value, its specialness, lives only in the mind of its owners and then only for a short time.

Growing up Jewish, I never had a Christmas tree of my own and I always have wondered why people would go through so much fuss over the thing.  And yet, look at how I struggle for the sake of my body just because I imagine it is somehow special and different than other peoples’ bodies. The time will come when this body will be trash. Is all the fuss over the thing really worth it?