I debated with myself whether or not to have a Christmas tree. My granddaughter had already visited during a snow storm and the snow was all she needed to make her happy. I wondered if it would be okay to break a lifetime tradition and simplify Christmas for one year.
I told a group recently that I had had a Christmas tree every year—a real one.
After I had thought about that, I wasn’t sure it was true. I couldn’t remember them all. Growing up in the country, it was easy to go out and cut one, and I know that we did. But Western Kentucky has hard wood trees, not pine trees. So, I’m not sure what the trees looked like. My older brother wrote once about dragging home a scraggly tree through the mud for Christmas. Christmas isn’t always white in Kentucky either.
When we first moved to the city, our family of five lived in two rooms. I can’t remember trees, but I will never forget one gift my older brother bought me—a little upright piano that had real keys and sounded somewhat like a tingy piano. And there was the year he bought the very latest bubble lights for our tree. We celebrated in whatever modest way we could.
We were together, and we were loved.
By the time I was a teenager, we had a small house in the suburbs with a big picture window. Now, I know that after that we had a Christmas tree every year in the front window—a real one. When I had a family of my own, the tree was the center of our celebration. In Michigan, we could go out and cut down one or get a real one on any street corner. In fact, we lived in the middle of an abandoned tree farm—Christmas trees five stories tall!
I treasure my traditions. They are a comforting reminder that some things haven’t changed.
Change is inevitable. But in a changing world, some things shouldn’t. We need to hold on to those things—whatever they are—that say “This is mine, and I am home.”
I’m not very good at accepting change. But to change is to grow. As I sit here writing a Christmas blog, it is a change I could never have seen coming. Change isn’t bad. It’s just different and the way we move forward, grow, evolve and become better, even happier. We can still clutch and drag along that which we can’t let go of and treasure those things we always go back to.
Our traditions are ours forever.
When and why did stores stop selling real trees? With more snow in the forecast and work, I probably won’t have a tree for the first time in a very long time.
That’s okay. I’m not giving up a tradition. I’m remembering it fondly and holding on until next year when I WILL start planning for the holidays earlier!
I do have a tree—a Charlie Brown Christmas tree just outside my front window.
It is exactly that. In the forest with high wildfire danger in the summer, it is required to clear out small trees and underbrush near your home. I left one. When I saw it I said it looked exactly like the Charlie Brown Christmas tree, and it stays.
As I finish this, the snow is falling and, in the best Charlie Brown tradition, my little tree is looking better all the time!
Merry Christmas! Happy Hanukkah! Happy Kwanzaa!
Treasure your traditions and the loved one with whom you share them!
Happy Holidays!
To you and your loved ones from
The Taylor Hicks Community
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4 comments:
Merry Christmas! Thank you for this lovely blog and all of your hard work throughout the year. Your efforts are truly appreciated.
I wish you a wonderful holiday and new year, warmed by the love of family and friends.
Thank you so much, Hdey! And thank you for all that you do...you do a tremendous amount of good things! I hope it shows that I love what I do here!
Merry Christmas to you and your family! May the new year be happy and bright for you all!
Sandy
Sometimes our traditions must just become memories. It's sad to think that change equals loss of parts of ourselves, but that seems to happen as one makes their journey through life.
When I looked at your defiant, sparsely limbed tree; I saw only the red ball that made even that scraggly "bush" stand out among the more majestic growths in your forest.
May all of our efforts in life stand out ; even though the towering achievements of others seem to dwarf them.
May we, as Taylor Hicks' fans. continue to honor him with our loyalty as we add new memories to our own biography.
cath
Thanks, Cath, for your thoughtfulness. I like your observation of defiance. Sometimes being defiant is the way to go! This little tree doesn't seem to have grown at all in the almost ten years I've been here. But there it is with a bright shiny red ball on it! And it's the one out there in cyberspace! :)
San
P. S. I didn't leave the ball on it...didn't want birds to be attracted and hurt by the glass ball.
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