Advent Calendar - December 1 - The Christmas Tree

This post is number 1 in a series of 24 for the 2010 Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories. On the 24th Day of Christmas, I'm supposed to talk about the Christmas Tree. Did you have a real tree, or was it artificial? How big was the tree? Who decorated the tree?

When I was growing up, we always had a real tree in the living room, decorated exactly like this photo. And every single year, there is a photo of me in front of it. We all decorated it together, and it had many ornaments on it that I made through the years, as well as our collectible Hallmark ornaments. It also had 2 special ornaments that my parents got their first Christmas together in 1948.

We always had a star, gold garland, silver icicles and multicolored blinking lights. On Christmas eve, we would leave the lights on all night long and many years I remember sneaking in in the middle of the night to check for Santa, and how the room seemed to be magically glowing.

Sometime in the mid-80s, my mom (like the rest of America, I think), got smitten with the silver aluminum Christmas tree, so from then on, we also had one of them setup in our dining room. One year, it would be decorated with all red and the next green. My dad still has that original tree. I hope to inherit it someday. A few years ago when my mom became homebound, my sister got her a new aluminum tree, this one with metallic green branches. She left it up year round in her bedroom.

Present day, our family has a tradition of going to a Christmas tree farm the Saturday after Thanksgiving, riding the hayride out in the fields, walking for miles to pick the right one and cut it down ourselves. Its usually about 8 feet tall and we spend about a week getting it decorated. Sounds cozy, right? We do live in Houston, though, so there are years when it could be 75 degrees picking out our tree! Its still jolly fun!