The Joy of Christmas Trees - New and Old

"The best of all gifts around any Christmas tree is the presence of a happy family all wrapped up in each other." ~Burton Hill

Finally with a little help from my youngest grandkids, I got my tree decorated. Isn't that the way of it? The ones old enough to be real help stop wanting to help with things like this while the little ones who need a bit of extra supervision in their attempts to make the tree beautiful, love helping. Oh well, one broken ornament is a small price to pay for such willing helping hands. I do have to admit that some of the ornaments are bunched together on the lower limbs, but that's okay too. I've never been one to worry about having a perfect tree. 

When I was a kid, we went out and got a cedar tree out in the field. We continued that tradition for a long time after I married. Sometimes the kids and I would go tree hunting. More often, Darrell brought one in that he spotted in the fields. Those cedars smelled great, but dried out so fast and were very scratchy to decorate and even worse to undecorate. So a few years back, I got uptown and bought an artificial tree. Then I bought one of those lighted trees. It was really neat until all the lights started going out. Now it is loaded down with lights, some attached to the branches that won't work and others strung on over top them. It doesn't look too bad - from across the room. In the dark. If you're three. Could be time to go tree shopping again, huh?

Some of the stories readers have sent in when they were entering my Christmas giveaway have talked about the fun of decorating. Here is a story from Sharon about her Christmas that talks about going out to get that live tree.

I grew up in central Pennsylvania to a single mother ...  What I remember about the Christmas season was the fury of activity with mom buying gifts and hiding them, Grandma baking and preparing all she could beforehand and Pappy getting ready to chop down the tree and bring it home. I only went out with him a few times, because sometimes he went pretty far into the woods behind our house to find to right one. I think now that he may have already known where the next year's tree was but being a child I just thought he went out and chopped down the first tree he saw. After all this time had passed, it was Christmas Eve, our big celebration. That is when our tree was put up and decorated. Everyone came Christmas Eve, every year.  ... So Christmas Eve became much fun and visiting from cousins you didn't get to see very often. I guess I was about ten when I realized Christmas was even more special at our house than most, or so I thought. It was also my grandparents' anniversary. The day they wed and started keeping house to begin their family. 

My Grandma made her dress, crocheted a pale green dress that had a dark green velvet ribbon at the waist and tied at the back with long ties down the back.  She still had the dress, even though she had not worn it for so very long. I used to beg her to let me look at it! Then as years went by, I got to try it on. ... I would look in what mirrors we had there and just stare into it, thinking what they may have looked like that day.  ... After they married, which I think was the Justice of the Peace, they went to the movies, which was a big thing to do then. That would have been about 1927. 

 ... As I grew up to a teenager then into a young adult, their 50th Anniversary was coming around. My one uncle was still single at the time. He bought all kinds of seafood for the Christmas Eve that year. Grandma always made clam chowder, homemade cookies, sponge cake and homemade breads. I loved her white clam chowder and so did everyone else. But that year my uncle bought shrimp, oysters, crab meat.  Everyone from the neighborhood was invited. ... What a wonderful time everyone had, neighbors dropping by for a few hours, Aunts and Uncles and cousins stopping in, all staying long and into the night. That year the tree was decorated by not just family but by neighbors too. My mom was always in charge of the decorating of the tree and all the kids were her helpers. Of course the last thing to go on the tree was the star at the top.  

Christmas was always a big to do at our house. It has never stopped being that big celebration for me. As my children and grandchildren have grown and enlisted into the the military and moved to other parts of the country, I still keep Christmas special in my heart and wish my family love, hope, happiness and tell them what family means to me.

As I sit here and recall those times I cry a little. Remembering the little girl who would sneak peeks at her gifts when no one was around, the one who watched and helped Grandma make her famous bread and sponge cake and cookies. Sneaking a taste here and there, with Grandma smiling as I did it and scolding me at the same time.......the fun of having all sixteen cousins running around for one night. 

Hope you enjoyed Sharon's Christmas story. And isn't that one of the nicest things about Christmas? That most of us have some good memories to share. Thanks for reading. And thanks for sharing your memories or what you like about Christmas with me.  

                             

Tree Fluffing and Story Fluffing Too

I did my Christmas decorating today. It no longer looks as if I'm moving in or out with all the boxes - except for one room where I've got boxes piled to the ceiling for present wrapping. Well, maybe not to the ceiling, but a big pile for sure. You have to have the right size box for your present after all. But even though I have stacks of nested boxes, I'm sure there will be one present that defies fitting in a box. That's why they make those lovely gift bags that don't take any wrapping. Cram that elephant in there and and stuff a piece of tissue paper on top of it and you got it. Wouldn't you know though that I like wrapped and taped and ribboned packages better. So wrapping presents is my next Christmas deadline.

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That is, if I don't get a real deadline before then. I've got a book floating around out there in edit land and sooner or later it's going to land on my desk again with my editor's remarks and suggestions. I don't mind editing because I want to make my story the best it can be, but back when she first suggested edits might be needed her words were that the story might need to be "fluffed" up. That word has hung around in my head ever since. Might I say haunted my thoughts a bit. Fluffed. How do you fluff up a story? Fluff is what Winnie the Pooh got in his ear when he didn't want to listen to Rabbit. Fluff is what that plastic pretend like whipped topping is. Fluff is petticoats under a summer dress. Fluff is pink cotton candy at the fair. Fluffing is what you do to your pillow before you lay your head down on it to go to sleep.

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And at Christmas time, fluff is what you do to an artificial tree to make it look somewhat like the real thing. At least that was what I was doing this afternoon after I pried the pieces of my tree out of its plastic storage container. It was really crammed down in there. That in turn smashed the branch-like appendages together and bent the wiry arms in unnatural growing directions. In other words it looked nothing like a tree should look. So the plastic branches had to be fluffed. Fluffing a pretend tree is not my favorite thing to do in the decorating job.

But I did it. In most all jobs there are some parts that are less fun to do than others. Fluffing branches is the less fun task. Pulling out all my sentimental ornaments to put on those fluffed branches is much more fun.

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It can be that way with writing a book too. It's not all fun and games. It can be exciting to come up with a new story, but it can be challenging too. And sometimes discouraging when the words are slow to come. Other times it can be a little scary when you're not sure anybody will like the words when they do come. And it can be tedious when you have to go over those words time and time again to make them right. And sometimes you have to fluff it up. Whatever my editor suggests, I know we have the same goal. To make the story one that readers will want to read.

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Thanks for reading and I hope all your trees and stories will be fluffed just right.

Christmas Memories

Well, the Christmas tree is up. And decorated. A few of the lights don't work, but if you squint your eyes a little, you don't notice it much. It's one of those trees where the lights are already wrapped around the branches. That's great, but whoever decided to put the kind of light strands on it where if one bulb is messed up the whole strand goes out needs to be sentenced to two weeks straight of pulling out those little bulbs and trying new ones to see if that's the bad light. I never did find the bad light, but my thumbnail is ready to fall off. ;o)

Somebody said I should check the fuse, but I haven't tried that yet. I just turned the tree around so the non-lighted part isn't exactly in the front. And with all the decorations on, you hardly miss those lights. Hardly. Anyway the tree's up and that's the important thing. I said it would be up this weekend and it is. My sisters and I even put up my mom's tree today. Hers is a short tabletop tree that we just put in a garbage bag and set in the corner of the garage in between Christmases that are definitely coming closer and closer together. I mean when I was a kid, Christmas Eves lasted longer than the whole year between Christmases now.

Christmas Eve was always a fun time for us when we were kids. That's when we went to my aunt's house. She spoiled us girls with a whole pile of presents, mostly clothes, but it was still fun to have that stack of brightly wrapped gifts to tear into. We had to eat the delicious supper first and she always had fruit punch spiked with gingerale. She was Christmas for me and the first Christmas after she died was lonely and sad and oh so different. I think that's true for everybody who's lost loved ones in the past year. Those empty spots around the Christmas tree are hard and reason for a few tears. But I hope you have good Christmas memories to keep the joy and the echo of their love in your heart.

I have lots of great Christmas memories. How about you? What about a favorite Christmas gift? My very favorite gift, well, I have two. One was a fountain pen and a bottle of blue black ink when I was thirteen or so. I had to have blue black ink. And the second was a desk. Writer-to-be gifts. Actually that desk was replaced by another Christmas gift several years later when my husband bought an old secretarial desk and had it refinished for me. That desk has held my typewriters and then computers while I've written a lot of books. The drawers groan when they are opened, but that just makes it all that much better. It has personality. And I still have the first Christmas present desk too.

One of my fun Christmas memories is the year when my daughter, Tarasa, was three or four and when anybody asked her what she wanted for Christmas, she would say "A candy apple." In those days about the only place you ever saw candy apples for sale was at the county or state fair in the summer time. So no candy apples were to be found in December. I wonder now why I didn't just put an apple on a stick and dip it in caramel. But I didn't, and Tarasa was more than happy with the candy apple substitute toys under the tree on Christmas morning. Years later I bought a chocolate covered apple, wrapped it up, and told her sometimes Santa was slow reading his list, but eventually he always came through.

As a Christmas treat for myself, I met Jan Watson, author of Troublesome Creek, Willow Springs, and Torrent Falls, for lunch last Thursday. We talked until the waitress was surely ready to throw us out. We weren't getting the offer of any more water in our glasses. That's for sure. But it's always so much fun comparing notes with a fellow writer that we had a lot to talk about. That's why you see writers gabbing nonstop to one another at book fairs. After weeks and months locked away in their private space trying to dig words out of their strained brains, writers need to talk. On top of all that Jan is a super person and writer. Her books are very popular and good reads.

That's what I aim for in my own books. For the stories to be good reads. Hope if you get one to read, you'll think I've been successful. Don't forget. If you want to enter my book-giveaway drawing, send me an e-mail from my website, www.annhgabhart.com. I'd love to hear from you, and thanks to everybody who comments here. I'll enter your names in the drawing too. Just be sure to tune in after the first of the year to see if you won.

I hope you have lots of great Christmas memories and that this month you'll be adding to your collection by taking time to do some things you enjoy this Christmas season. Talk to you Wednesday.