Setting up the Christmas Tree

Setting up the Christmas Tree has become a chore. Way back in the before time (When is that?, Well I guess that was when it was fun to put up the Christmas Tree) it was fun to put up the tree.
     Since I have known Teri, she has had something against putting up Christmas Trees. The first year We were together, my Mom gave her a small tree put put up in her apartment. It was a foot or so tall, fake and of little bother. She at first didn't want to take it. She thought since she was not celebrating Christmas their it was not necessary to have any Christmas decorations. She took the tree and put it up in her cramped little Apartment.

     I'd been out of my mother's house for a few years before I met Teri and I'd had a Christmas Tree every year and begun collecting Hallmark ornaments for the tree. More about that later.  The Trees had always been real and full sized. My Mother gave me some ornaments for the family collection to start me off. I chose several of the ornaments that I had memories of putting up on the tree. A bird with faded paint, some thin glass ornaments that when they were bought were felt best put on the bottom of the tree so if the animals knocked them off and broke them who cares. They now held a place of value in my heart. The most important one was an ornament so old the writing was barely legible. It was silver and one of m,y Dad's. I wrote in another blog, in an other life about how I imagined it came to the family and then how It was given to me by my mother and several years ago broken purely by mistake. One of those events, that no matter how you spin it could of happened to you, it just happened to someone else.
Teri's and my First Christmas together she suggested we not have a tree. "Why have one when We are not going to be here" She said. A Valid point, but I wanted one and I needed  one. It wouldn't be festive without one. So We got one. It was a real tree and Teri didn't like the mess of it. Needles falling off it every day, watering it every day and the fire hazard. We came to a compromise, fake one year, real the next. We did it for a few years until one year I thought, "Man real trees are a pain. let's go fake." so We did.
     The Fake Tree we used for years required you to put up a three piece center pole, then take a lower branch, smooth out the needles and limbs, then put it in the correct slot. Each Branch took several minutes to straighten after it had spent eleven months in a bag.
   

  A new Tree was purchased two years ago. It has two separate strings of lights already hung on it and all you have to do is set up the three pieces of the tree, the branches are pre-hung along with the lights. Of course, you still have to smooth out the needles and branches.
      Is piece was not supposed to be the length of 'War and Peace' so I a\m sorry I have rambled.
      On the night We,Teri decided to set up the tree, a discussion between Teri and I erupted, yes discussions can erupt. It centered on the thought from Teri that the Tree had to be put up on this night.(December 9) before it got too late.
       In fairness We do a bad job of getting decorations up in a timely manner. We scoff at the people who put them up just after Halloween, We laugh at the amateurs who insist just before Thanksgiving is acceptable. "Fools!!" We decry, "How can You have the Christmas spirit when we have not even celebrated the day of giving thanks declared by Abe Lincoln, himself after the Civil War!" "Cynics, money lenders, Store Owners you all...." I guess I've gone off topic again, sorry.
     After all that decrying, suddenly it's the week before Christmas and We are the only Christian house without lights. Even the Jew have Hanukkah lights up. So in our hast We put up some lights on the house, never the way it was planned, try to stick stakes in the frozen ground to hold down the light up deer (really feel Christmasey doing that) and finally the tree gets up. After it is all up and We sit back, we wonder why we waited and didn't do it sooner. Ah, life is funny.

     Well, Teri wants to put up the tree on December 9th, Sunday. It had not been a day of rest for me. I started cookie baking because just like the Christmas tree, cookies never seem to get baked like they did back when I was a kid and my mom would set aside a day to do it with us. I started out with my Christmas cookie,
the pinwheel cookie. I don't know how or why I associate this non denominational cookie with Christmas except it was baked around Christmas one year and I guess I loved it and decided I needed to have it again when I thought about cookies for Christmas the next year. After that I made Russian nut balls. The Name  get Nastia's attention until she hears nuts are in them. Crazy Kids, one day she will grow up and realize life is incomplete without some nut, relatives or from a tree, it doesn't matter. I thought I was making Teri's favorite Christmas cookie, it was not her's it was her sister's, opps. And finally I made Raspberry chocolate bars, but I put all of the raspberry jam into Nastia's cheese cake so I had to use Blackberry Jam. It was almost as good.
       So I guess after all of that I was tired. Plus We went to see a real good movie called Green Book.
     I'll finish this later

I'd taken teh tee down a few days before. I have learned to some time anticipate what needs to be done and do it in advance. Other times I procrastinate and let it hit me full in the face, but not this time.
 The Girls get involved in putting up the tree. Elena is figuring out what goes firdt and I show her willingly stepping aside to watch the tree go together. Slowly all the pieces are put together and the different outlets are connected. I want to put some of my old Hallmark orniments up and I bring down a string of lights they fit. The Girls start to pull out the orinments from Hallmark and I remember why I stopped putting them up. I guide them, Teri says lecture them on the proper way to handle them. Some go up and some of the older one are not working so well. The Train with Santa in it is not going off like it should and the whistle sounds drunk. I get sad, theses stupid orniments are important to me and it is too soon for them not to work. I look at the box on one, it is from 1992. I remember I'm 60 and I bought this almost half a life ago.
     Tree is up and the boxes go back up stairs, to make Teri happy. An Other Lesson I've learned over the years. Christmas is here and the tree is up. Now what about those lights. Oh yeah, I got the ones from last year still up All I have to do is find an extension cord. Christmas is so much fun.

















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