Mary and I grew up in similar traditional homes in the Midwest;
her father a physician and mine a dentist, both practicing in towns populated
by about 30,000 trusting people. Both of us found our early lives interrupted by
moves, caused by those fathers going off to war. The holiday traditions became even more
valuable with the changes in location.

When we married our traditions mingled: Mary bringing the
decoration of Christmas cookies, me bringing Tom and Jerry decorating parties. Children brought personalized ornaments, some
made as school projects, and all needing to be displayed. The children were placed in the background
when we invited our Navy friends in for drinks and tree-trimming, although they
always got to hang their own ornaments.
An unexpected serendipity from the parties was the numerous ornaments
brought as gifts, many of which are still annual items to remind us of friends
and times gone by.
Even the years we spent on foreign shore duty, both times in
the Philippine Islands, we had trees, courtesy of the Navy Commissary
system. The first year we decorated the
tree in popcorn: little realizing that the morning would leave only string
since the ants had better use for the decoration than we did.

Our foolishness over popcorn followed only two years after
our episode in San Diego, where we took advantage of the closeness of the beach
to use a bucket of sand to support our smallish tree. There, in the morning we found that dry sand
doesn’t support much and we had to quickly buy a conventional stand.
Our present home is one of about 26 on a street that ends in
a common green belt. In typical
California developer fashion little was made of lot size and much of high ceilings. Our living room ceiling literally extends to
the fourth level or about 50 feet. We
are original owners and the neighborhood included nine families who moved en
masse from Huntington Beach. They chose
their lots first and consequently our house is on the smallest lot of the
street, but the interiors are all similar.
One of the nine knew of a tree lot where you could cut your own tall
tree and all of us went there on that first Christmas, only 10 weeks from when
we all moved it. Everyone wanted a tree
at least 15 feet tall.
Our tree this year is about twelve feet and two things made
for that special feeling at the beginning; first, we netted it so it came
through the doorway with ease, and second, a stand I ordered after a catastrophic
experience last year, worked as advertised, allowing us to set the tree
precisely where we wanted in less than five minutes. Removal would prove equally as easy.
There were no bare spots and ample space for the ornaments
and ease of placing lights. Ornaments of
note included: a Jeepney, reminiscent of the Philippine, a Moon Child, give us by
my mother, gone now for sixteen years, the flannel Santa Clause, which has
topped our tree for more than twenty years, several with the boys names or
handiwork on them, some from Taiwan, where I shopped while Mary had the family tree in Evanston and I shared mine with the Marines in Okinawa, many
remembrances of duty stations, sports, activities, or groups we belonged to,
and finally, one I gave Mary two years ago, which has the phrase, “She has read
too many books and it has addled her mind.”
Beneath the tree is a handmade flannel skirt made fifty
years ago by a dear friend, now living with her daughter in Texas. I pause,
remembering the many presents it has held for anxious hands to open.
I probably could not tell you a dozen of those presents, but
I could easily tell you a story about each and every one of the hundred or more
ornaments, adorning the tree. This year
I ended up decorating the tree myself, since Mary was involved with other
activities during the shortened pre-Christmas season. It was not work. It was truly an opportunity to revisit a very
full past.
In my next post I will join my voice to those many who are
talking about the Tea Party, Tea Party Politics, and the Tea Tax with an explanation
of how I was forced into a T-Party choice of my own. It should be fun.
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