My goal each year is to get our home decorated for Christmas during Thanksgiving weekend. Since we've been in the trailer the past four years, decorating is at a bare minimum as space is at a premium. Since we are in a season of transition yet again and since we had been sick, recovered and then got sick again, there has been no decorating. Rather than bemoan my lack of decor, I decided that it would be fun to share some old pictures of our old home and Christmas decorations over the years. So, in essence, it's a virtual, virtual tour. I hope you enjoy the pictures of some of our decorations. I know I have enjoyed looking back through them myself.
I believe I have shared before about our artificial tree, but in case you haven't heard, I will share it again. When I was about 9 my grandmother got an artificial tree. It was huge! It was gorgeous! And I hated it! I loved the smell of a real tree. I loved the look and feel of a real tree. So when I got to my teens and began to work I would always bargain with her and pay for half the tree if she would agree to put up a real tree. Most years that's what we did.
Here are a couple of pictures of my grandmother's beautiful tree.
My sister and I opening gifts in 1974 and 1981
These were the only two I could find on the computer. But you can see that it is a very large, full tree.
When we had our own home we always bought a real tree. But as our family grew it got tougher and tougher to put out the money for a tree when we would rather spend that money on gifts for our loved ones. One year we had gone out for a super special Black Friday deal, (our first and last time!) And lo and behold, they had an artificial tree on sale for $5.00! A six foot tree for $5.00! My grandmother had passed away a few years earlier or I'm sure she would've had a grand laugh at our tree! As it turned out it stood 6 ft tall, but much of that was the stand and trunk, and it was not very big around. In fact, it was quite a scrawny tree compared to what we were used to. But it was a great buy and so we put it together and set about decorating it with our precious family ornaments. By the time we were done, I could not have loved that tree any more! It became a very special part of Christmas for me. A few years later a friend of my grandmother's gave me another tree, the exact same size and kind of tree, so now we had one for the living room and one for the family room! What a blessing those trees were to me. We would all decorate the family room tree with our country theme and then we would decorate the living room tree in a very elegant burgundy and gold.
Here is the family room tree. 2003
You might be able to tell we had it set on a small box to give it a little more height, but even without the box you can see that there was a lot of "trunk" to that tree.
Here is the living room tree with it's burgundy and gold decorations.
I hope you've enjoyed our tale of three trees. It's funny how very much I have come to love our little trees. After all, it's really not about the tree at all, is it. It's really about the fact that we gather to celebrate the greatest gift of all, the birth of Jesus. And it's about who is gathered around that tree with me to celebrate Him. I often chuckle about how much I hated my grandmother's big, beautiful tree and how much I came to love our little scrawny trees. I know she would have laughed right along with me. And I'm sure she would have ribbed me every year about my lack of "pine tree smell". lol
This year we will once again not be in our own home for Christmas so I will have to make do with memories of Christmases past. I will enjoy reminiscing here and I hope you will enjoy the trip down memory lane as well. This month I will write a little about some of our traditions as I share our virtual tour.
Be Blessed,
Colleen
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