DESIGNER CHRISTMAS TREE

Celebrating our very first Christmas in our country home is one of my favorite memories from childhood. Since a Christmas tree is where all the presents are delivered, it’s very important that it looks good. This tree was definitely different and unusually beautiful or at least we thought so. It was decorated with unusual ornaments and most of the decorations were homemade by us. My mom said it was a designer tree and we thought that had a good ring to it.

That Christmas was special for many reasons. I remember us taking all day to decorate the tree because first it was handpicked from the forest and then we had to hand-make our decorations. It was decided we were going to have a real old fashion Christmas to celebrate our first year in the country. First my dad cut down a small fir tree for decorating. Then he carefully trimmed the branches and put the trimmed tree into a bucket of wet sand.

One side of the tree was pretty straggly so that side was turned to the wall and we decorated the pretty side. My mom wrapped the sand bucket in bright red foil, and with that done she started making things for us to decorate the tree with.

Mom cut out strips of red and green construction paper to make a chain to put around the tree. My little brother and I glued the strips together making a long, colorful rope chain.

Then she made popcorn in the kettle on the stove and we threaded popcorn together with a needle creating a long white rope to drape around the tree. The white popcorn rope twisting around the tree with the colorful construction paper chain created an exceptional combo of colors that we found to be perfectly beautiful.

Then to finish up the decorating, our mom baked ginger bread men in the oven and with white icing she drew eyes, a mouth, and buttons on the cute little men. She punched a little hole in each of the ginger bread men and threaded a tiny ribbon through the hole so that it hung on the tree just right. We also took some of ornaments saved from previous years and mingled them among the new handmade ones. Then my mom made snowflakes from a flour mixture and flicked snowy drops all over the green fir branches. Our little tree was so regal with its wintery white garment of popcorn rope and snow. The colorful older ornaments stood out like bright jewels.

Completing our master piece was this beautiful angel my dad placed on the very top of the tree. All in all we thought we had the most beautiful, old fashion Christmas tree ever.

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Katie is a local author. Her stories can be found at https://kathleenbuxtonstorytime.com/