Christmas trees are a very central part of Christmas, as you well know. We got our Christmas tree usually by going out into the surrounding fields around our house, pulling a sled behind us, and finding a good-shaped Christmas tree. Our father and we children would select the tree, put it on the sled, and pull it home. At home, Mom usually had hot chocolate and cookies waiting for us, as it was usually cold and snowy. When we were very young, our parents bought a Christmas tree from one of the Christmas lots that dotted the city.
We usually got our tree about two weeks before Christmas, on a weekend. Then we would set it up in the living room at the far end of the room. First, my father would string the lights around and through the tree. He had a penchant for blue lights as he got older. He said they looked “heavenly,” but when we were young, we did have multi-colored lights. We children were allowed to hang plastic icicles when we were young. As we got older, we we allowed to take over arranging the glass ornaments on the tree. We had to be careful that the ornaments were hung in a well-balanced fashion around the tree--but not in the back of the tree that was next to the wall. My mother was the arbiter of what was well-balanced.
Then we hung filmy plastic silver-colored icicles on the tree. There was also an argument with my mother about the icicle hanging. She thought we hung too many icicles in one place at a time--”You’re clumping them!” she would yell. So it was very important that we paid attention to this tedious task as we hung one or two icicles at a time on the tree. If seemed to take forever to cover the tree!
The final task was to set up the nativity scene underneath the tree on a bed of cotton that had sparkles glued on it. The nativity set was ceramic and thus, breakable. We were not allowed to touch it until we were each about 5 years old for fear that we would beak the figurines. There was a stable, the Blessed Virgin, Joseph, an angel glued to the top of the stable, two or three shepherds (one carried a sheep), a sheep, a cow, a camel, and three wise men (or three kings, as they are sometimes called because no one wants to admit that they were astrologers). The baby Jesus in the manager was the pièce de résistance. It was added on the evening of December 24, Christmas Eve. Since the temptation to place with the figurines was sometimes almost unbearable, we would often sneek under the tree to play with them.
In the meantime, my father would string the outdoor Christmas lights. Well, early on, they were inside, around the two front large windows, one in the kitchen and one in the living room. Later, during his “blue” period, my father built a huge wooden cross, onto which we stapled evergreen branches and then he strung with blue lights. That was secured to our front door and two spotlights were focused on it. We never used the front door, so that was not a problem. My mother hung an evergreen wreath on the back door, which was the door we always used. These were our Christmas decorations until I graduated from high school.
No comments:
Post a Comment