”
I’ll never forget the year that my Mom made me hang my ornament
at the back of the tree,
”
I told my husband Chris recently as we strung lights and
ornaments onto our Christmas tree.
“I’ll never forget the year that my Mom made me hang my ornament at the back of the tree,” I told my husband Chris recently as we strung lights and ornaments onto our Christmas tree.
I was referring to, of course, the homemade ornament I made in pre-school with loving hands and proudly carried home to my Mom. You know the sort, the clay handprints, the crayoned creations and the popcorn and bauble strands that only a parent could love.
Looking at my ornament now, I could kind of see why it was relegated to the part of the tree that faced the wall. It consists of a round plastic drink lid that might snap onto the top of a small McDonald’s orange juice. Brown yarn is stuck to the front and back. Three circles and a straight line are marked on the front. “Kelly” is written on the bottom in a teacher’s penmanship. The result resembles a face with hair. I don’t know if the face is supposed to be mine or my dad’s. The yarn could have been my hair or my dad’s beard.
It hung on my parents’ tree for years. Then one year, my mom found a spot of honor for it in the back of the tree.
I was stunned, but I probably shouldn’t have been. Decorating the Christmas tree for my family wasn’t just a holiday “to do” item that we checked off our list. It was serious business. You might even say it was a ritual.
Choosing the perfect tree was the first step. When I was very little, my parents bundled us kids into the car and up to the mountains to cut down our tree.
In retrospect, my mom said she and my dad were either very brave or very foolish to attempt such a thing with three kids, one of whom still wore diapers.
But for us kids, it was pure magic. Making snow angels, throwing snowballs and tasting the wet, soft stuff was like being whisked away to a winterized Disney Land.
But when our bickering, motion sickness and the wet weather got the better of my parents, Mom and Dad said, “Enough is enough.”
“The last year we did that, you threw up, your dad was bleeding, and your sister wouldn’t stop crying,” my mom remembers.
So, we spent the following holidays hunting for the ideal tree at the tree lots. But the seriousness of the decision didn’t lessen an iota.
The possibilities are endless. Should we choose a tall one or a wide one? Douglas or a Noble Fir? Flocked or not flocked?
My mom is the choosiest of the bunch. We could spend up to an hour showing her the choicest trees, but she always found the flaw in even the most beautiful-looking ones. Finally, after scouring the aisles for a full, but not too full tree with the fewest holey gaps, we would come across “the one.”
I have to admit, probably to my mom’s credit, we always had the most gorgeous tree.
The next step, of course, was decorating it. My mom hung the lights because she was the only willing one to do it and the only one whose job could stand up to her critical eye. (In all fairness, Chris says I’ve inherited that trait).
Next, boxes, enough to fill a warehouse, were hauled from the attic. We carefully unwrapped each ornament, each one a gift in and of itself. We oohed and aahed over the prettiest ones and exclaimed over our oldest. Our two oldest ornaments, a house and a bell that my parents received as wedding gifts from my great aunt, were always hung at the top two branches for all of us to behold.
Each ornament told a story and conjured up memories of vacations and holidays past. After the last of them were hung, night would descend, and the best part would happen. We would turn out the living room lights and admire the tree, glowing with blues, reds and greens and dripping with silvers and golds.
When I was 6 or 7, I spent, holiday songbook in hand, gently singing Christmas carols to our tree.
To this day, I still love to sing the songs I committed to memory years ago – “O Christmas Tree,” “Away in a Manger” and “Silent Night.”
Decorating our Christmas tree with my husband takes on special significance. We adorn it with all of the ornaments that used to hang on our parents’ trees that we’ve now inherited.
There’s the golf and skiing and other sports-themed ornaments Chris’ Mom bought him every year. There’s the homemade reindeer and Santa ornaments my Mom made and the plastic snowflakes and gingerbread men that I bought for my first Christmas tree.
Then there are the unrecognizable clay handprints and strands of popcorn. There’s even a little plastic face with brown yarn for hair that hangs in the front for everyone to see. OK, truth be told, it actually dangles from a branch in the far nether regions of our tree.
