An old tradition, lost.

We had an old tradition that the Christmas decorations went up the day after Thanksgiving.  We kept to it for a long time.  When I was little the Christmas decorations were upstairs in the attic.  Oh what fun it was when my Mom would pull the attic stairs down and she climb up and started unloading the stuff.  I so badly wanted to sneak up those stairs and see what treasures the attic held.  My mother had visions of children breaking the necks so we were just barely allowed to be on the third step.  No higher.   We had a huge plastic Santa head that would sit on the front door.  We had the electric candles that sat in the window.  We had that ugly looking Christmas tree, the one I have already posted a picture.  It had every ugly ornament that could be found in the ‘70s.  To make it even uglier it had the fluffy garish shiny garland and the shiny tinsel that we lavishly threw on the tree.  We always tried to recycle it for next year but it ended up on the floor, breaking the vacuum and the cat pulling it off the tree.  We always said next year we will not buy any but when next year came around with the box in hand we were lavishly throwing up on the tree again.  Those are all long gone.  The pieces that I still have are: a Santa in a sleigh pulled by two reindeer,

 a ceramic Christmas tree that is missing some of its bulbs

and a nativity set.  There were two nativity sets but one of the mangers finally succumbed to age.   Sadly it was my favorite of the two.  As you can see these are pretty nicked up.

This particular memory took place when we were older and teenagers.  My step father had replaced the tree with this gorgeous thing bought at a specialty Christmas shop.   That was the first time I ever seen flowers tucked into the tree and beads as garland.  From that point on I never used the fluffy tinsel garland and always had the flowers tucked into the tree.

We just had the most wonderful Christmas dinner.  All my step dad’s family was in and the house was stuffed with people.   Night came and everybody made their way to their beds or homes etc.  I had the bright idea to decorate the whole house while they were sleeping.  So I dragged the tree out (it was now stored under the stairs) and dragged all the decorations out.  I put the tree up and the ornaments.  I scattered the decorations all over the house and it was AWESOME.

My sister woke up and did not find it too awesome.  In fact she was pretty durn mad.  LOL.  I took the fun out of the decorating and she let me know it very LOUD and CLEAR!

Yeah I never did that one again LOL.  Well it has been tough getting my tree up this year. It was not put up the day after Thanksgiving that is for sure.  We have a new tradition for that day.  ROAD TRIP!   The nativity scene is still sitting in its plastic box on the love seat.  The cat has been lying on top of it.  Cats are crazy.  The ceramic tree and Santa in his sleigh are still in the attic crawl space (I do not even have the fun of having one of those attics where the stairs come down POUT… it’s a crawl space upstairs)  as  I write this.  But it will be down and out before I post it, as the pictures will show.  I do not write and post at the  same time.  I do the story writing portion while I am work… shhhhhhhhhh!