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| Vintage book...I just liked the cover! |
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I love
Christmas, mostly because it means family and memories and traditions. Some of my favorite family memories
growing up involve Christmastime and very few are actually related to the gifts
under the tree.
This year I
thought it would be fun to do a little series on my blog called The 12 Days of
Christmas. It doesn’t really have
anything to do with the song, just that I’m going to do 12 posts related to
Christmas, in the 12 days leading up to Christmas. If I am feeling real clever, perhaps I can connect the song
with my topic for the day. But not today.
Perhaps my
all-time favorite Christmas memory involves Christmas trees.
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| Me, 36 weeks pregnant with Miss Rose! |
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When I was
really young, the church my family attended was very conservative and kind of
discouraged the secular celebration of holidays. So there was no talk of Santa at all, and we were unaware of
all the hub-bub that surrounds Christmas.
But come
Christmas Eve, my parents usually gave in. Not because we (I was the oldest of three at the time) asked
for it, because we weren’t aware of what we were “missing.”
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| Miss Rose, almost 3 yrs old |
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When I was real
young (7 and under) I vaguely remember my parents getting a tiny tree by the
time Christmas day came around, and we got a few small gifts. I don’t think we even have pictures of
those years.
I think it was
the Christmas I was 8 that we got “Christmas plates” instead of stockings and
we got to pick out an ornament for a small tree at Fred Meyer (we lived in the
Seattle area).
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| Our family, 2006, about 5 months pregnant with Gracie |
What I didn’t
know, until the Christmas I was 9, was the reason we often got a tree on
Christmas Eve was because my dad would go out and find the abandoned tree lots
and bring home a tree for free. We
lived very meagerly, so I doubt a tree was in the budget.
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| Christmas 2007 |
Then we started
going with my dad on Christmas Eve to get trees and it became this fun,
memorable holiday tradition that we anticipated as soon as December hit. By now there were four of us, and we
couldn’t wait to get in the car with my dad and bring a tree home to my mom.
One year when I
was in college, my dad didn’t go with us—but us kids still went and even
introduced my college best friend to our tradition. I think that year might have involved scaling a fence, but
thankfully my memory is a little fuzzy.
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| Christmas 2007 |
Now, all these
years later, I’ve noticed that tree lots usually stay open late on Christmas
Eve and they don’t abandon their unsold trees. Trying to squeeze every last dollar out I guess.
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| Christmas 2009 |
We like getting
our tree a week or two before Christmas because the kids are really excited and
want to enjoy it. And that way
we’ve enjoyed it enough to take it down by New Year’s Eve.
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| Christmas 2009: the year I had TWO babies needing Mommy to hold them. |
But every year,
when we get our Christmas tree I think back to all the fun Christmas Eve’s we
had as a family, with my favorite holiday tradition. We may not find abandoned trees on Christmas Eve, but I hope
we are creating memories with our girls that they will look fondly back upon in
their adult years.
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| Our first Christmas in our new/current home! |
