At Christmas my family usually does a little bit of decorating
At Christmas, my family usually does a little bit of decorating. Some years, when we have traveled for the holiday, we have done very little decorating, not even buying a Christmas tree.
When we have the holiday in town, we always get a tree, even though my mother complains how expensive trees are now. It is for this reason that we sometimes end up with something that closer resembles the Charlie Brown Christmas tree, puny looking and sparsly needled.
She works and my brother and I live away from home, so often he and I go pick up the Christmas tree or else we would not get one until the day before Christmas! When we do a tree, we go down to the basement and bring up all of our old boxes of Christmas tree ornaments.
We have never done a “themed” or “designer decorated” tree. We always use the family ornaments, mismatched as they are. But, it is always a pleasure to look through as we open them and tell a story about where they came from or some other related tale.
We always have a star or angel or dove to stick on top of the tree, too. We always put lights up on the tree… We use the colored, flashing LED lights, not the “classy white” lights. It makes for a funny, colorful looking tree, but I much prefer the homey look to the perfectly groomed Christmas display.
We put out little Christmas elf hooks to hang our stockings and little Christmas town scenes on the shelves for display. We have a set of nutcrackers that go around the house on various shelves and bookcases as well.
Occasionally we will hang white bulbs outside, but not too often, as our house is in the back corner of our neighborhood, and it is not a neighborhood known for decorations, so no one drives around looking at decorations. At night though, you can see our Christmas tree from the road, flashing through the large front windows.
