By Jina Bacarr
Can you feel the excitement in the air? Everyone is waiting for Santa Claus to arrive and I’ve got a plate of Christmas cookies and milk all ready for him. But at my house, Santa puts the presents under my Christmas Piano Tree.A piano? you ask. Why?
My mother loved to play the piano, especially at Christmastime. She knew all the holiday carols by heart and every year for as long as I can remember, she would sit down at our old studio upright piano and take us on a musical trip to Bethlehem or a journey with the Three Wise Men or rock’n roll with Jingle Bell Rock.
When my mother passed away a few days before Christmas several years ago, I didn’t have the heart to trim a tree that year. Then I remembered her piano and how important it was to her. Why not decorate the piano instead of a tree? I thought. After all, a piano is made out of wood and that wood was once a tree, so why not a Christmas Piano Tree?
I decorated our wonderful, old studio upright with Christmas ornaments that year and I have been doing so every Christmas since then as a tribute to my mother.
I wanted to share my Christmas Piano Tree tradition and remembered how my mother always reminded me that Christmas was not about presents, but about the goodness in people. I wrote a one-act play called The Christmas Piano Tree (produced at the Malibu Stage Company Theatre in Malibu, CA) about Mrs. Baxter, a lonely widow lady who’s forgotten the true meaning of Christmas until a girl with pink hair, a dead cell phone and a big problem helps her re-discover the magic of the holiday season.
In most parts of the U.S. snow is on the ground, but we’re all comfy in our homes this Christmas Eve. What about the homeless? Or our neighbors about to lose their homes?
Perhaps you know someone like Mrs. Baxter, the lonely widow lady in my play, “The Christmas Piano Tree,” or a teen in need of help and understanding like Rachel, the girl with pink hair. Donate food or a helping hand to someone in need this Christmas. You’ll be glad you did.
Merry Christmas!!
Jina Bacarr loves adventure in exotic locales, which led her to write the RIO Award-Winning novel, The Blonde Geisha, as well as the award-winning non-fiction book, The Japanese Art of Sex. She has worked as the Japanese consultant for numerous TV production companies both in the U.S. and Canada and also in Europe. She’s the author of Naughty Paris, Tokyo Rendezvous (Naughty Bits anthology), Spies, Lies & Naked Thighs and Cleopatra’s Perfume and coming in Feb. 2010, The Blonde Samurai.
More great holiday gift-giving articles and ideas can be found in our new Holiday Gift-giving Guide at http://bit.ly/1Z6LSF
