When Daddy told me they had candles on their Christmas tree, I imagined it covered with lots of candles in the branches. It would not have been so, there weren't that many candles to 'waste' and the fire hazard was extreme. Yet, if I would have been him, I would have been spell bound at a lit tree, wouldn't you?
When I was a child, we had lights with seven bulbs on a string. If one went out, they all went out. Christmas Eve seemed to be the night of the hunt for the bad bulbs. After Christmas, although our tree was up until the twelfth night, who cared? I am bad. To make it work, my parents started putting the outdoor bulbs on the tree. Although they gave more heat, the tree was only on in the evening for a few hours and mother was diligent to water it as needed. The tree was up no more than two weeks.
Some folks set their tree on Thanksgiving evening. My friend in KS did that. By Black Friday, the tree was decorated and sat in the mighty spot in front of their picture window for all who passed by to see. She said they needed to do that first so they would have time to make cherry chocolates and candy cane cookies.
I always wanted a tree with lots and lots of lights on it. One year, Ryen and I put 300 on a medium size tree. I am certain it was me that said, "Let's do the decorating in the kitchen and take the tree into the living room". We spend a good amount of time doing it just so and the calamity happened when we couldn't get the tree through the door! You may laugh, it was funny to us, as well.
Now, there seems to be a poll somewhere in holiday land regarding lights. You are either all for multi-color or you are all for white or the same color. I am not certain how I won this round in Fargo, but after using multi, then white, we settled comfortably for mini rice lights and not very many. It isn't that we don't have more, we have new boxes of them in the Christmas tubs.
I am not sure just what pushes parents to decorate completely for the holidays. I am not even certain why people stop putting up a tree. Odd, isn't it how something one has cherished and picked up needles at Easter, over the years doesn't happen anymore.
My grand parents had a silver tree. My parents always had a cut tree, a top of some lofty pine somewhere in Canada, I suppose. Cut, bagged, frozen, and sold. Shiver. It took at least a day for it to relax. We, as a family with children, did cut trees ourselves.
But now, we have a little tree, with not enough lights to read by, covered in ornaments from the last eleven Christmas' together.
If we do not have a tree next year, it will be because no one wanted to move it from the dining room to the living room. You see, it never gets stored, just relieved of the ornaments except for two red wooden birds which represent Bud and his wife Shilpa.
It is a nice tree. The angel on the top shines her light unto the face of the Seth Thomas 8 day clock telling us it is Christmas Time.
What is your take on this?
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