As a Christian family, Christmas holidays mean a great deal to us. What we do every year, right after Thanksgiving, is to begin preparing for the Christmas “setup”, as we call it.

We have keep all ornaments and decorations in the attic. Every year we try to buy something new to add to our collection. But our greatest tradition is to use the same ornaments year after year.

We have some ornaments that date back to the 1970’s. These include crystal balls that our kids have decorated themselves, either in school projects or at home. Of special value to us is a small Angel, made out of plastic, that was decorated by one of our children who is now deceased.

He made that angel when he was about 5 years old. It consists of a plain, regular, white, plastic angel, as you normally find in any store. But he had decorated it in a very special way. Using glue and glitter he painted the wings in glittery white paint, the hair was bright yellow, the robe also white and the sandals were colored light brown.

The cheeks and lips of the angel were painted red. The angel had a little halo attached to the head and my son had added special shiny silvery glitter to that part, it was quite remarkable.

Each year we placed that little angel right in the front branches of the tree. It has been many years since my son passed away but the small plastic angel still takes front row on our tree. It is faded and most of the glitter is now gone, but everyone refers to it as George’s angel and we take loving care of it.

We use many other ornaments we have accumulated throughout the years made by all of our kids and now grandkids as well. We do make new bows each year to change the overall color of the tree decorations.

My oldest daughter knows how to make these pretty bows with a silver or gold ribbon, approximately 2 or 3 inches wide and we scatter them from top to bottom, not too many so as not to overshadow the other decorations. It is our family tradition to gather on a designated day to a family dinner. It could be just a spaghetti dinner, or perhaps turkey, whatever, but all of my four children and their spouses as well as all of my 9 grandchildren come to our house.

We have an early dinner and play games. After a few hours, we start decorating the tree. Even the youngest of my grandkids has his say as to what ornaments should go where. After the tree is completely decorated and everyone gives their approval, we bring out all the presents and they are neatly placed under the tree, to wait for arrival of Christmas morning. As far as decorating the rest of the house we place Christmas lights all around the front porch.

Over the years we have accumulated many figures to set up on the front lawn, most of them with lights and we use a timer, so that the lights turn on as soon as it gets dark outside and remain on until daybreak. Our neighbors always comment our house is one of the prettiest on the block. On Christmas eve our family usually gets together once again, and we just serve “finger food”, and, of course, eggnog. We have a karaoke machine and we sing songs for hours.

The kids in particular get a kick out of this because they get to show off, some of them singing “solos”. Christmas morning everybody gathers around the tree and my oldest grandson, now 15 is in charge of distributing the gifts. All adults laugh and giggle with the mess of all the paper flying around, and the delightful laughter of the young ones. I would not be able to tell how much we spend in Christmas decorations because, as I said above, we use and re-use the same year after year.

I would say that we spend in lights or maybe another addition to our outdoor collection approximately $30 to $40 each year. But the joy and happiness of having our family together at that time is priceless.