Bring on the Christmas

Growing up, the day after Thanksgiving was reserved for shopping and decorating for Christmas.  My dad was a huge stickler about giving Thanksgiving its due - there was no Christmas talk, music, or decorations until this day.  As a result, we got pretty excited about decorating for Christmas.  I have continued this tradition with my family, but my son has yet to be excited about this process.  Maybe it was the tree.  Here's a picture from a past Christmas to give you an idea of what we were dealing with:

It was fine, but there were lots of holes and, well, we just thought we needed an upgrade.  We are artificial-tree people.  Ever since my mom scratched her cornea on the sprig of a real tree while trying to get it in the door of our house when I was four, we have had an artificial tree.  And since they are so easy and convenient, and we are easy and convenient kinds of folks, we're sticking with the artificial.  So Charlie and I went to Walmart and found this tree.  Rick put it up while I showed Charlie a Christmas episode of Thomas the Train where Thomas puts up a Christmas tree (but he doesn't really...no hands, you know).  I was really hoping it would help him get excited about the Christmas tree.  It worked!  He started talking about HIS Christmas tree.  I broke out the decorations and we started in.

Daddy helped him put the topper on the tree.  You can't see it very well in this picture, but that tree topper is made out of cardboard, glitter, match sticks, and glue.  My parents made one like this their first Christmas together and they still top the tree with it every year.  We decided to make one our first Christmas too.  It's completely awful, but it makes for a nice story. :)

I saw a picture of a friend's tree on Facebook, and it was amazing.  Perfectly symmetrical, orderly, and only with freshly store-bought ornaments.  You won't find that at our house.  About half of our ornaments are old, homemade, or both.  Growing up, my grandparents gave us an ornament every year with the date.  Often, the ornaments coordinated, but they were never exactly the same.  Like one year, I got this one:

My cousins and brother got the partridge, the turtle doves, and the french hens.  Unfortunately, the year has rubbed off and I'm not sure which Christmas this was.  But when we left home, we had 18 ornaments with which to start our own collection.  This one is one of my very favorites:

For my second Christmas.  It makes me smile.

Anyway, the end product turned out something like this:

Perfect. :)