Poor Thomas, I dragged him all over town because no one had the right Christmas tree, and I'm very intense about my tree. Last night, as we lugged the tree home and tried desperately to get it to stand up, I cried copiously and wished terrible things on the tree and everyone and everything around me. Finally, after being poked in the eye 3 TIMES by the tree, we got it up and I hung the lights. But, of course, we'd just begun.
I have 3 humongous boxes of ornaments. And by humongous, I mean really fucking huge. Triple stacked, each one. It took us almost 3 hours, all told, to get everything onto the tree. At one point, during the last stage, which is the little tiny balls that are the size of blueberries, I referred to myself as "determined" when it came to the tree. Thomas sort of chuckled to himself. "I'm not sure 'determined' is the word I would have used," he said.
We like to refer to our tree as "T:3, Return of the Tree," inkeeping with our tradition of naming our trees. Last year's was, of course, "T:2 Electric Boogaloo." We'll start working on a rhyming sequel name for next year ASAP. What rhymes with four? "T:4, It's blocking the door"?
In my family, the tree was serious business, and involved a complex series of compromises between my parents' family traditions.
Rules:
1. The tree must be a Douglas Fir.
2. The lights must be the large old kind. They must be colored, and they must wink intermittantly.
3. Ornaments must be glass ONLY. They can be any shape or color, as long as they are glass.
4. The tree must be finished with tinsel.
Thomas and I have a douglas fir for the first time, but sadly, I cannot afford the big winky lights. And I despise tinsel.
Very early on in our relationship, Thomas's mom was cleaning out her house and offered us a huge box of Christmas ornaments. We looked in, and there, in the box, was one of the most amazing collections of old glass ornaments that I had ever seen outside my parents' house. There were many, many that I recognized from my own tree. It was one of those moments in which I knew we'd be together forever. It's nice to be able to uphold some of my family's traditions and still be using his family's ornaments.
Though our tree is 99% glass, we do have some exceptions. Ornament spotlight of today:
Godzilla!
5 comments:
Very nice!
I also have a lot of glass ornaments, but my mother keeps buying ones for my son that are ceramic. They go on the back.
T:4 Back for more?
That Godzilla ornament is FABULOUS. I love it!
YES! I love T:4 Back for More!!!
Fantastico! How tall is that sucker? It's beautiful.
Pen, it's 8 feet tall. Last year's was a foot taller and I would guess about 2 feet wider around. It was a struggle to get all those damned ornaments on. Yours looked very lovely, too!
Post a Comment