By Joyce Caughron Rhodes
Christmas Tree
Almost everyone has memories of past Christmases.
I hope most of them are good. There was a certain one in my past, that really stands out, especially when I think of Christmas trees. This particular year, the kids were still at home, we bought a beautiful pine tree, about 7 ft. tall. I love the smell of pine during the Christmas seasons, anyway, we decorated the tree. I must say it looked beautiful, with all the different ornaments that the kids had put on the tree. It seems each one had their special thing they liked to put on the tree. Well, after a few days, I noticed some pine needles had fallen on the new Christmas tree skirt and I picked them up. The next day there were even more and finally the next day, I could hardly believe how many had fallen. The tree and all the decorations came down that day. I did have water in the tree stand but the tree was past that stage. I believe it must have been cut down, probably, in September.
This meant a trip to purchase another pine tree. I thought, “ I will do something different this time.”
We decorated the tree again, in the meantime, I had purchased a black light and a can of black light spray paint. This was supposed to make the tree glow in the dark. I sprayed the tree real good.
That night, a little after dusk, I called everyone, “Come see the tree when I turn on this black light.”
You can imagine our surprise when the whole den glowed. I mean the couch, the chairs, tables, and even the floor. So, this meant taking down another tree and what a mess to clean up.
We decided we had had too much trouble with our live trees, so back to the store we went and this time purchased an aluminum tree. We couldn’t use our strings of lights on the aluminum tree and this meant purchasing a ‘color wheel’. In case you never used one, this wheel was sort of like a fan, you plug it into the electrical outlet and the wheel rotates and changes color as it turns.
It looked really good. You know they say, “The third time’s charm.”
“When you get down to it,” as they used to say, “Christmas is to remind us of the birth of Jesus.” It’s not how good you decorated the tree with all your favorite ornaments or the excitement of thinking what to buy for each person on your Christmas list or how and what you will put in your front yard to outdo the neighbors. It is the time of year when everyone feels closer to their fellow man.
It’s the time of year when people will smile and greet strangers and for the most part, happiness seems to be in the air. Wouldn’t this be great if we could have this Christmas feeling the year around? What a great world we would be living in.
