O Tannenbaum

I think all Christmas trees come with a story.  There are those 'runway model' trees that look like they stepped off the pages of a Martha Stewart magazine.  Some are natural and simplistic with their strands of cranberries and popcorn.  There are towering 12 ft trees with classy white lights and hand-crafted ornamentation.  A few are 'Charlie Brown' trees, cute, tiny, perhaps a little pathetic but much loved.

Our Christmas tree tells the story of our lives.  Or at least my life, since David and the boys are somewhat recent additions.  See that green clothespin horse in the top left picture?  My parents made that for my very first Christmas.  Ever since, I received one ornament each year, up until I reached high school.  At that point, I began collecting ornaments from the places I traveled too.  I have about 15 years of travel ornaments that fill me with nostalgia every time I unpack and decorate the tree.  Some are from far off places, like when we backpacked around Europe on a belated honeymoon one summer (snowman above, and all the ornaments below on my little upstairs safe-from-boys tree).

This year is the first time we haven't taken a vacation anywhere, so I bought a hand-crafted Swedish dala horse (red wooden horse above) at my hometown's Scandinavian Festival.  We've continued the tradition for the next generation, buying an ornament for our boys that somehow represents them for the year, such as Rex for Josh's second Christmas, purchased at Disneyland earlier that year.  We have a lot of Disney ornaments.  David does get some input in the Christmas decor department.  He picked out the beautiful white tree and train ornament (above, middle) for Ben's first Christmas.  We don't go with traditional "baby's first Christmas" ornaments around here, I think it's more special to tell Ben later that as soon as his daddy saw this ornament, he knew that it would be perfect for Ben.

The ornaments on our tree span five generations.  I have an an entire childhood of plastic crocheted ornaments that my great grandmother dutifully made for all her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren every year.  Josh loves the little pompom bear (above, bottom of the box) so much that I have to hide it each year as his not-yet-gentle fingers try to pry off eyes and limbs.  But for the most part those hand-made ornaments are the most child-friendly I have.  I have a few ornaments given to me by my grandparents and one of my grandmothers just announced that she wants to give me some of the Hallmark ornaments I loved decorating her tree with as a child.

So that's the story of our tree.  Their artificial limbs hold up to the smack down that is living with two boys (I caught Ben the other day beating the tree with a whisk).  I love that my tree spans three continents and five generations.  It is a pleasure to decorate it each year and re-kindle the memories.

And now I just realized that I need to go get a "Christmas in our new home" ornament!