Genealogy Jottings

Tomorrow is the first day of Advent, and the geneabloggers group has a great idea for the season. We will write posts every day about some our family Christmas traditions. This way, we can gather, organize, and preserve our Christmas memories. We begin with Christmas trees.

As I grew up in the 1950’s and 1960’s, first in North Dakota and then in Wyoming, we always put up a Christmas tree. My siblings and I eagerly anticipated doing so each year.

Sometime before Christmas, we took a trip with our Dad to the local tree lot, selected a fresh 6-or-7-foot tree, and took it home on top of the car. Dad would set it up in the living room, and then we allowed it to “settle” for a day or two.

When my mom deemed the tree to be ready, the entire family took part in decorating it. Dad strung the colored lights while we children held the light strand to keep it from tangling. We then added metal reflectors behind each bulb. Most of the decorations were blown glass ornaments, but I also had a Styrofoam ball ornament decorated with ribbon and glitter that I had made in the first grade. My brother insisted that it be hung at the back of the tree every year because he thought it was so ugly. We finished the tree off by placing a star on the top and hanging icicles from the branches. I do not recall having a skirt around the base of the tree, but that did not matter because the area would quickly fill with brightly-wrapped gifts. When we finished decorating the tree, we turned off all the room lights in order to admire our handiwork. Perfect!

The tree remained up until New Year’s Day. While a televised football game played in the background, we all helped remove the decorations. We stored them all away (even the icicles) in boxes in the basement until the next year. Then we dragged the poor, now-dry tree out to the alley to await pickup by the local trash collectors. Christmas was over for another year.