O Christmas Tree 2010

I loved our Christmas tree in Georgia. Yes, it was fake, but it was 9 feet tall and looked awesome in our 20-foot tall living room. Besides that, it already had lights on it. But we knew it would not fit in the 8-foot tall living room of our rental home, so we let it go for about $2.00 at our garage sale.

I had resigned myself to the 2010 plan to simply decorate with our two Charlie Brown trees. However, as Thanksgiving approached and with it the day after--our traditional day for setting up Christmas...and as I continued to ponder Christmas with those two Charlie Brown trees...well, I just couldn't do it. So we did something we haven't done since before children turned our calm lives upside down: we got a real tree. Now don't go thinking that since we are Northerners now we went trampling through fields of snow to chop our own tree down. Nope, there's a place called Home Depot that already has them chopped and ready to go.

We chose one we thought would fit in here. It fits, though barely, and our little angel topper shall have to take the year off unless she is willing to sit atop our tree headless. I am enjoying the tree with its subtle pine smell and unique branches. As for the Charlie Brown trees, well, one of them did make it into our family room.

As a self-proclaimed control freak--especially at Christmastime--I was more than a little sheepish in telling Mark I needed him to dig one of the Charlie Brown trees out of storage so the children would have their own tree to decorate. It's just that the real tree would not fit all of the ornaments, you see. And by that I mean that it just cannot hold all of the jingle bells and cat ornaments and trains and trucks.



I did handle the whole thing without freaking out, so perhaps my control freak is becoming a bit calmer. At any rate, both trees were decorated, and we carried on with some of our other traditions. There were big cups of hot chocolate topped with way too much whipped cream because there were no little marshmallows.



We then read from Lisa Whelchel's The ADVENTure of Christmas about the origins of the tree as an important part of Christmas. And we read our traditional story A Wish to Be a Christmas Tree. As I have mentioned before, this story about friendship focuses on one Christmas tree who never gets chosen. Because he is older than all of the other trees in this field, he is much, much taller. This fact was not lost on the Princess. After I finished reading the story, I asked, "Is there anything we can learn from this story?"

She immediately piped up: "That people should always get a tree that isn't too tall?"

Her answer was as cute as her pictures. As usual she was the only one who wanted much to do with any photos. I forced the children to at least pose for the obligatory picture in front of the tree.