O, Christmas Tree

This year's tree is only 9 feet tall.

For the next two weeks, our contributors will be sharing photos and stories about their favorite holiday decorations.  We would like to invite our readers to join us in showing off their decorations and telling us why they’re so special.  Please submit a photo or two and a brief explanation (100 words or less, please) to NicholeTheHillisHome [at] gmail [dot] com.  To get us started, I present you with my tree.

Christmas and I weren’t always so close.  In fact, after the magic of the Santa-myth wore off, I’d say we were full on enemies.  Decorating seemed like a silly waste of time, I hated shopping for gifts people didn’t need, on what I’d come to learn was just an arbitrary day.  It was my mother’s favorite holiday, and there was always just too much going on with the baking and the cooking and the shopping – I hated it. (I did one year try to participate in the holiday and attempted to make the dobos torte. That year is now forever referred to as the Year of the Great Dobos Torte Fiasco. I gave up again after that.)

When my mom died six years ago, my father and I let Christmas come and go without marking the occasion.  The decorations stayed in storage, although I did buy him a new tv that year, on which we watched the Fast and the Furious on Christmas day.  The following two years were spent similarly, and then three years ago, I decided I was done with my feud with Christmas.  I went home and took the family ornaments out of storage, and brought them back down here.  I got a 10 foot tall tree and 1000s of lights.  I had friends over to help decorate it and told my dad he was coming down here for the holidays.

You can barely make out the Dorothy Hamill hair here.

My tree is decorated with ornaments from every stage of my life.  It includes everything from one that I made in nursery school, with a picture of me sporting a sweet Dorothy Hamill bowl cut, to more recent additions that have been gifts, mostly reflecting my interest in food and drink (of those, I think my favorite is the mouth-blown, hand-painted bulb of garlic).  It’s become something that I love, and a way to still share something with Mom. I’ve even started working my way through holiday portion of her recipe boxes – although, I’ve yet to revisit the dobos torte. Baby steps.