Holiday Roots

Growing up, my mom went all out for Christmas.  She decorated for every holiday, but Christmas was the annual tour de force that I've rarely seen rivaled.  We lived in a three-story house in a Seattle suburb, five kids filling its space with our volume and energy, but when it came to December, the three Christmas trees and other seasonal decor gave us hooligans a good run for our money.

Our living room had a cathedral ceiling that we loved to put to good use with a fifteen-foot tree, often chopped from our own yard.  You think it's hard trying to get a seven or eight foot tree in your house?  Try one twice that size!  Frustration ruled as we tried to shimmy that gigantic tree through our front door and then around the corner into the living room.  The only way to assure it wouldn't fall over = metal wire.  The only way to decorate something that tall = a ladder.  Talk about an undertaking.

That tree had the prime location in our house, visible upon entry, so it had to be fancy and formal.  Shiny, shiny, shiny = my biggest memories of the living room tree.  Gold balls, sparkling tinsel and riboon, crystal ornaments, the whole nine yards.  As a kid, my very favorite thing had to be the hiding bird, this small sound box that got tucked somewhere inside the tree and made quiet chirping sounds every few minutes.  I loved trying to find it midst all the dense branches and layers of decorations.  This room also had a certain reverence to it at Christmas time, because only the best nativities--the pretty glass or porcelain ones with the angel hair underneath--could be displayed here.  The fancy candles with their soft lighting, the bowls of nuts, the hardbacked Christmas books, the Christmas records being played nearly all the time, the fireplace going.  Nothing compared to hanging out in our living room in December. 

Besides our living room Christmas tree, we had a kitchen Christmas tree, and a basement Christmas tree that we kids could decorate pretty much any way we wanted.  This was where all the homemade, class project kind of ornaments went, the ones we made for our parents with so much pride, the ones just right for a rec room.  I think we called it the red tree, since most of the decorations that went on it, besides our homemade ones, were red. 

The kitchen tree fell somewhere inbetween the formal and the kid-friendly.  Casual yet classy.  And of course matching the family room decor that bucked up against the kitchen.  Forest green and mauve, baby.  Gotta love the eighties.  That meant the tree had mostly mauve decorations.  Like I said, my mom went all out.

I bring all this up because I don't feel complete if the calendar has flipped to December and our tree's not up yet.  I try and pretend like I don't care, I try and wait patiently for my husband to long to have a tree up like I do, but I've learned I'm not very good at either of those things.  I turned to Stephen the other night and breathed a contented sigh: "Don't you just love having our house all ready for Christmas?"  He laughed and said, "I know you love it" with a wry smile on his face.  And he's right.  Supportive Husband Award for helping me connect with my holiday roots every year.