Oh, Christmas Tree

What is it about Christmas that brings on such nostalgia and wistfulness?

My mind is constantly swirling with memories this time of year. Memories of my kids when they were younger, memories of my mom, memories of my own childhood. So many things to remember.

Sigh.

Tonight I'm looking at the Christmas tree strung with big colorful lights, some of them twinkling and blinking because that's the way my parents tree looked. They always had a few lights twinkling on the tree and I loved that when I was kid. I still do. When I look at those lights I think of my mom and all the decorating she used to do. 

It used to start with the tree.

All five of us, my mom and dad and us three girls, would go out to the tree farm and march around looking for the perfect tree. Some years we were lucky and found a tree fairly close, other years we weren't so lucky and had to trek around for quite a while to find a tree. Some years we had open, clean fields to walk in and some years we were trudging through snow, cold and wet and impatient to find a tree. My parents only bought blue spruce trees and they liked to hide amongst the other trees.  

"Why can't we get one of these?" we would ask. But nope, blue spruce was their favorite so we kept looking until we found the field they were growing in.

We would finally find a tree and tag it. Does anyone do this anymore? I don't know why we didn't just chop it down there and then. But we didn't. We tagged it and went back for it the next weekend. That week between tagging the tree and chopping it down was the longest week. Some years it seemed to take forever until we got to bring the tree home, especially when I was younger.

But once the tree came home, magic happened.

My mom would go up in the attic and pull down all the decorations. The ornaments, the elves that sat on the shelves, the Santa cups and mugs, the ceramic Christmas tree, the white clings that we got to stick on the picture window, the lights, and the garlands of holly and berries.

Mom would let us decorate the front picture window with the white clings. There were angels and snowman. Santa and his sleigh. Reindeer. Stars. Snowflakes. And all the holiday greetings like, "Merry Christmas" and "Happy New Year" and "Ho, ho, ho". Dad would help her put the lights on the tree and then Mom would put the ornaments on. And that was all that would get done that day.

We would come home from school the next day and Mom would have the house fully decorated. The tree would be lit and twinkling and the little wooden white house and fenced yard would be set up under the tree, filled with all kinds of Christmas figurines. It looked like a mini-ranch and it had a big "C" on the front of it. The house smelled wonderful with that fresh blue spruce smell permeating throughout.

She made our house the coziest, warmest, most love-filled house ever.

And it started with the tree. 

So as I sit here looking at my tree, I'm thinking about all these memories and for just a moment, I'm ten years old and loving life.

Sigh.

__________

These pics are from two wall hangings in my house. I found the top one several years ago in a local store. It was after Christmas and marked way, way down. It looks hand stitched which is why I bought it. Plus it was only a couple dollars. 

The bottom one is something I brought home with me from our trip to Virginia this past fall. I found it in the gift store at Monticello and fell in love with it. I love silhouettes, especially Christmas silhouettes.

And look, they're decorating a tree.