A Tree of Memories

Sunday was the day for stringing popcorn and cranberries and decorating the tree with the help of friends and family. We're fortunate to have a core group who've done this so often that I could just leave them to it.

But I don't. I love to watch the old familiar ornaments appear and get put where they belong-- like the tree-topping angel that I made from a kit almost thirty years ago.

At last the popcorn cranberry chains are done -- about 75 feet of them -- and Justin and Cory take on the job of draping them to my exacting standards.

Then there are the scarlet ribbons for the tree . . .

. . . and the dogs . . .


. . . and one cat (Eddie was having none of it.)

The ornaments are an eclectic mix -- from this shabby blue ball that still bears the traces of the glitter-traced "Skip" that either my brother (Skip) or I adorned it with over fifty years ago. . .

. . to store bought crocheted snowflakes and candy canes and tin 'icicles' and a few porcelain bells that once adorned John's grandparents' tree. . .















. . . and this kinda tacky thing that was part of a box of ornaments my parents bought from John who was selling them as part of a club project back in high school . . .
















. . and this sequined heart made by Justin way back in third or fourth grade. . . .















. . and still another heart, made by Theresa, Aileen's mother.

















The finished product isn't glamorous-- but it's laden with memories.

Breaking Up Christmas

Our family tradition, inherited from my maternal grandmother, is that it's bad luck to have the Christmas tree still in the house on New Year's Day. So I've spent all day deconstructing the ten foot fir that only a few weeks ago we were adorning.

It's a slow and contemplative process and gives me time to reconnect with each ornament as I remove it from the tree and lay it on the dining table to await the final boxing up and stowing away for another year. Old friends, these decorations, from the blue glass ball with my brother's name staggering across its surface, the glitter long gone, to the somewhat lurid pink and blue globe -- the last of a box of ornaments my mother purchased from my then boyfriend, now husband, in 1959 when his high school club was selling ornaments as a fund-raiser.

There are the simple stuffed fabric hearts that were a mainstay of the decorations when our boys were young and our dogs and cats rambunctious and there are two boxes of fragile glass ornaments inherited from my mother. A green wooden curtain ring with the figure of a baby on it marks our older son's first Christmas in 1972 and simple felt cutouts sprinkled with glued-on sequins commemorate our younger boy's stint as a Clover Buddy (FFA for the grammar school bunch.) There's a plaster Santa, carefully painted with tempera paints by my husband when he was a cub scout, and a wooden angel that was a gift from the homeroom mother when I was an eighth grader.

The satin ribbons are untied and taken upstairs to be ironed; the cranberry and popcorn is slid off the thread into a bucket for the chickens; the strings of lights are pulled off and the tree is toppled and dragged out of the house. Only a slight fragrance of fir remains -- and we are safe from bad luck for another year.