(this appeared in the Smithville Herald in 2010, when they upgraded their website, the archives didn't transfer over).
Tinsel, that’s what I remember the most. My older siblings and I would blow each little piece of tinsel onto the tree. We’d hold it in our mouths to launch it. So basically the tree of my youth was covered with spit laden tinsel.
Dad always produced a live tree for us. When we lived in Louisiana, he would cut one down. For several reasons: first, his previous job was as a logger, so he had the skill. Secondly, we didn’t have much money since he was in college. When we moved north to Illinois, we still had a live tree but it was of the purchased variety.
Dad always put a mystery gift under the tree. The last year we were all together, he had fifty silver dollars wrapped in duct tape in a Pringles can. If we could guess exactly what it was, we could have it. He kept the fifty bucks.
After the years with my family I spent about a decade with no tree of my own. It didn’t seem important and I was always visiting other people’s house for the holidays anyway.
Then I met my husband Keith on Halloween 1990. By November 5th, we were inseparable. All of the sudden a tree seemed important. We bought a little dinky tree at Wal-Mart. That Christmas, we never dreamed our children would one day be hanging decorations on that same tree.
Years later when we were married, I found all of my decorations that had been packed away for many years. As I pulled each one out, memories came rushing back. My mother had made these decorations. I hung them on the tree reminiscing of my youth. Happy memories surrounded these priceless ornaments.
After being married for several years and moving to Smithville, we never seemed to be home for Christmas so our tree stayed in the box. When Kyle came along, once again, the tree seemed important. He was born on December 29th, so he was a year old the first time we put up the tree for him. I did all the work, I mean ALL of it. Keith wasn’t in to it. Locate the tree in the storage room; locate all of the Christmas boxes. Haul them all upstairs. Unpack the tree, organize the limbs, connect them to the base and stand up it up. Untangle the lights; string them around, and finally: the decorations. I felt it was very important to start traditions and do things the way they are supposed to be done when you have children.
I had a set of Bethlehem characters, Kyle kept taking the mule off the tree to play with it. The breakables had to be put up high so he couldn’t get to them. Actually most of the ornaments were put up high so he wouldn’t try to eat them or hide them. The next Christmas, Kyle had a three month old brother to admire the tree with. Once again, I did all of it with the exception of a few decorations Kyle put on.
Over the next few years, the kids squealed in anticipation the day after Thanksgiving knowing it was time to get the tree out. I continued to put the tree up and the lights, but I no longer had to put any decorations on, they hung them all. I cherished watching them put up the decorations my mom made, connecting a part of my past to my life now. They would hang those “grandma made” decorations right next to the home made ornaments they had made over the past few years. Somehow that dinky Wal-Mart tree purchased many years ago held all of my most precious memories, old and new.
This year, everything changed about putting up the tree. My youngest son Kolby announced how the tree was to be set up and forbid me to touch it. “You just hand the branches to me Mom, I’ll do it!” A fine job he did too. Then I just sat back and watched as these two wonderful boys beautified our tree. One tradition missing in our home though is the spitting of the tinsel. Matter of fact, we’ve never even bought tinsel.
