I LOVE the holidays

I just LOVE the Christmas holidays and I get it honestly. My mother LOVED Christmas too. When I was growing up, we always put the Christmas tree up (and a million other decorations) the day after Thanksgiving every year. We never had a live tree and I guess I never thought about it back then. Always a flocked tree. Completely white and artificial. My mother also decorated with a theme of some sort. It was always beautiful, but not exactly traditional.

It looked something like this.

The irony is that my mother used to tell the story from her own childhood where they would go out and cut a tree on Christmas Eve. I decided I'd always have a live tree when it was my own and up until our kids were almost ready to leave home, I stuck to that promise. I still love a live tree. Jim's parents always have a live tree.

We use the same ornaments every year and add one or two to the collection. Back in Jefferson, we still have ornaments the kids made at school and they'll go back on our tree one of these days. Despite almost always having that live tree, we have had a few trees die before Christmas even arrived. Once our ornaments even slid off the limbs as they drooped.

I love to put all those twinkle lights (preferably white) on the live tree. Then after Christmas, disassemble the entire thing as the dead needles fall - lights and all. Then one year a long time ago, Jim decided to throw the lights away with the tree. Just another example of pure genius. Those strings of lights are like $2 and after Christmas, they're practically free. This should be a rule as far as I'm concerned. Never save Christmas lights.

We have a little tree here in Belgium. It has about 10 little ornaments on it. I put it up way before Thanksgiving because I wanted it to be up when Randi and Frazier were here. Under it are all the presents they brought for us.

I've always put up just the one tree, but I distinctly remember as a kid having a second tree in the den. A silver aluminum tree with one of those rotating lights that makes the tree look red, then blue, then green, then yellow. The picture below that I found on the internet may actually be our old den. Ha.

It looked something like this.

Incredibly popular, incredibly tacky and incredibly, everybody had one.

I grew up Catholic and we always went to midnight mass when it really was at midnight. There really shouldn't be a 7:00 p.m. "midnight mass". Anyway, before mass we'd get to open one Christmas gift. I remember one time choosing a gift from my Aunt Dora. She was extremely "thrifty". I think there were other things we called her too. The gift I chose turned out to be a plastic ink pen given out at the local bank or somewhere like that. :~\

When I was a kid, we always had outdoor lights. With huge colored bulbs, I think the wiring was actually homemade. My Daddy was an electrician and worked at the paper mill. I think the wiring may have been made at the paper mill. I bet one of my brothers can answer that one. I wish I had a picture of those lights. My Daddy loved putting up those lights and would line every peak of the roof with them. We once put lights all around our house on Wedgewood. It was not as much fun as my Daddy had always made it look :)

On the front porch of the house where I grew up, there was always a wreath on the front door and those plastic candles that light up. The picture below that I also found on the internet are similar, if not exactly like the candles we had.

And of course, there are the sweets! I don't even like to cook, but I love to make fudge and iced sugar cookies. You know, with all the chocolate in Belgium, there's no fudge.

And who doesn't like shopping?! I love thinking about a special gift for those on my list. And perhaps my favorite thing to do - gift-wrapping! I love to light my Aromatique "Smell of Christmas" candle and put on my Charlie Brown Christmas CD and wrap gifts.

And lastly, there's the Christmas music! My mother was a music teacher in the public school system and a piano teacher in the afternoons. We always had a lot of music in our house. I know the words to pretty much every Christmas song and I begin listening to Christmas songs sometimes even before Thanksgiving! I was so excited when Randi included 2 of my Christmas CD's in her "bag of goodies from the States" and Ross added to my collection with a couple of homemade CD's from his playlist. My list of favorites is way too long.

Although our Christmas isn't the same as it has been in the past, I try not to think about that too much and just look forward to when our family gets to come visit. And our weather is nicer :)

I hope you enjoy whatever Christmas traditions you have, wherever you are, and whomever you're with!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!