Shocking. Absolutely unacceptable! December 12 and nary a post about Christmas yet on this blog! I will admit to having been a lazy-bones in posting on this blog. It started with good intentions: Give y'all some of Sarah in stead of me for a change, but then I ditched you. Sorry, chaps! So gird yourself up and get ready for some fabulous posts from now till Christmas. We'll be having posts about our Christmas traditions, music, recipes, pictures, and much more to make up for our negligence beforehand. :)
This post is about our Christmas tree. The more Christmas trees I see, the more I realize that ours is a little different--we know some families who have themed trees--all silver and gold or blue and white. Some families swear by the parents decorating the tree. Some families have bought their ornaments at one time and keep buying new ones each year.
Our Christmas tree, somehow, is not like any of these.
The bottom limbs are always sagging from too many ornaments hung there by the littlest people. Our ornaments have no rhyme nor reason to them--the collection has grown with each child in the family. We haven't a color scheme at all--there's everything from gold to purple to turquoise to copper. But I think it's beautiful. The ornaments are not just decorations--they are memories, and practically part of the family. There are some things that hold honored court with the tree branches this year that have hung there every year since I was a wee little thing myself. I can remember peeping into the depths of the tree to see my favorite ornaments illuminated by the colorful Christmas lights...inhaling the clean, wintry scent of fir, and feeling that somehow everything was right in the world. You know what? It's still that way. If I just get close enough to the tree, bend low enough to look at it as I did when I was a child, and then just be, Christmas gains all of the wonder it had for me as a little girl. That being said, I thought I'd show you some of my favorites of our ornaments. Get ready for the lovely, the uncouth, the homemade, but the best of our ornament collection. ;)
This is an angel my Gentleman woodburned with my name the year he got a wood-burning set. I can still recall his sheepish grin as I unwrapped it and hung it on the tree. The little thread is frayed now, but I love it just the same.
Here is a pretty feather-angel that I've always loved, even before Scotland became my heartland-after-America. :)
Relics of the years when Dad and Mama taught music in the public schools...there's an entire marching band of these fellows. Actually, we have a rather musical tree with a quantity of trombones, tubas, and other paraphenalia on it, though I suspicion the youngest kids haven't the foggiest idea why.
The ice-cube man I bought Mama. Isn't he stinkin' cute?
A little bit of retro-ness to brighten the tree. :)
Ah. And who could forget the Christmas Pickle? It's a Victorian Tradition that we started with Daniel partly as a joke because he loves pickles so much. You're s'posed to hide the pickle in the tree and whoever finds it has...good luck or something. Anyway, it's now a family favorite.
These little hand-print reindeer and the like crowd our tree like fall-leaves. :D
Before Cracker Barrel stopped giving out free biscuits, it was one of our favorite family restaurants. :P
This little musical-note has a rather Gift-Of-The-Magi-Christmas-Miracle story behind it. ;) It was made by a very poor little girl Dad taught in band who wanted to give him a Christmas present but couldn't afford anything, so she made him this ornament. Dad always gets to hang it up and get sentimental.
And last but not least we have the little dove glass-ball. It has its own midnight blue velvet box, and we always handle it extremely carefully like we did as children, even though I routinely handle things just as delicate now. It's almost a sacred duty, hanging it on the tree. ;) There are many many more ornaments that are just as beloved, but I didn't want to bore you. :) I hope you enjoyed this first peep in our Christmasing. :)
~Rachel
P.S. Thanks for your patience as we give our blog a beautifying treatment. :P
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You are not alone! Our tree gets covered each year with such an assortment of wooden, glass, clay, paper, fabric ornaments. Oh, and lights, and perhaps a stray candy cane here and there. The top has a star. There are the favorites that must be placed in just the right spot so they don't fall, and the breakables that get put up top. There's the ones with long strings that hang down past two or three branches, and the ones whose strings barely fit on the branch. There's the ones that have people's names and the ones we have to try to remember whose it is. With 12 people in our family now, someone usually remembers which ones are theirs! =) Mommy hands them out, the kids decorate, and Daddy usually has Christmas music playing. We also set up our nativity, with the wooden stable, and the wise men sitting above the TV (since they, of course, didn't actually see Jesus until Jesus was like 2 yrs. old!). The wise men's camels came from Israel (courtesy of our aunt who went on mission's trips).
ReplyDeleteWe have the usual kafuffle of trying to get the tree in the stand without letting it fall over, and does the tree have water? We always get a live tree, and cut it down. This year we had to get a slightly smaller tree (we'll see how much smaller it really is than usual). =)
So, we'll see how loaded it gets this year. I love it when the tree is so covered, you can barely see the branches for the loads of trinkets and memories hung on it! Of course, I like seeing the actual tree too, and smelling the sweet scent! And, the floor is covered for a month or so with a blanket of needles (even if it is a thin blanket), and sometimes we find a collection of ornaments under it, that have fallen off their perches. I'm excited to get it up. And, wrap all the presents I got, and shove them under there. I'm so excited for when they open the gifts!! I think they're going to love 'em!
Oh, and you can't forget making krumkake!! (Don't catch the house on fire. heehee! =) I get to make it now, since I have my own krumkake iron that you put on the burner, and my aunt who used to do it got married and moved away.
I remember that Pickle!!!
ReplyDeleteWhen we would come over to yalls house, Sarah would tell me to find,
"The Pickle" in the tree!=D=D