Merry first day of December friends, family, and new readers. Break out the trees. Sport those ugly sweaters. Let the eggnog course through you. Spend like crazy, and leave enough for your bills. No worries; God will provide and keep you secure. In honor of day 1 of many people’s favorite month, allow me to share about my first Christmas tree.
Make no mistake I’m going to be spending Christmas with my parents(assuming I’m off), who live not far from me, but it definitely feels like my first Merry month. For the last few weeks I have been passing through many stores, watching all the Christmas supplies go up faster than buildings. From the tallest fake tree to the smallest, lovely ornament. Best believe I wanted to wait to go shopping with Courtni, who loves Christmas more than any other time of year.
Originally I was going to go with a white tree with lights I saw at Walmart, but the winner ended up being a traditional green 6 foot tree with lights Courtni and I found at Save-a Lot. We rolled down the aisles, me studying every ornament upon the shelves, visualizing them on my new tree. If I wasn’t for Courtni’s second opinion I probably would have been there longer than we we were as I did my usual head scratching and beard scratching, trying to decide what I wanted.
I’m happy with the tree decorations we went with. A red and white tree skirt for presents to rest upon. Ornaments shaped like fruit, and a few of those carved out in the middle as if to show the sweet goodness after taking a big bite. My other ornaments include some golden snowflakes(wouldn’t that be great in real life); reflecting and glittering bulbs; and a eight, tiny, red, white, and green stripped reindeer which I named. Their names: Roxanne, Maxine, Hosanna, Clare, Maximum, Charles, Howard and Darnell. The most names I can guess out of the original eighth is only six. I was let down that the red, gold, ad green garland we picked was not 10 feet long as the packaging said it was, so spiraling it around the tree didn’t quite look as I had pictured. Instead I sniped in it three and entwined the pieces in different parts of the tree. High on top stands a white and gold angel, looking over everything with a trumpet in both hands.
Non tree decorations
As our work was complete, I scanned every branch, pondering if I had enough beauty resting upon the tree. At first I was set on buying some more ornaments the following day, but something inside me whispered to me that no more ornaments needed to be bought. However, this past week Courtni provided me with the finishing touch- our first ornament, which we bought together last year. That ornament is a dapper gingerbread man and a lovely gingerbread woman holding hands(if they had any), with our name, on a silver pan, with a heart dangling below.
The reason I felt like I needed more ornaments was simply because I’ve grown so used to all my parent’s decorations they’ve cultivated over the years. I can still visualize all the goodies hanging on their 7 foot snow covered tree with artificial snow. From home made decorations by me and my siblings to the latest ones my mom bought from a good sale.
More decorations are going to come with time and a family of my own. I look forward to the days to come when I’m no longer living alone as I am currently. I look forward to my wife and I buying more decorations and perhaps a taller tree. I smile at the thought of my first child hanging his or her first ornament on our tree for the first time. Him or her searching every branch as I did for the perfect spot to sit it in. Me being able to kick back sipping my egg nog, blasting Nat King Cole’s timeless Christmas music through the house, while the kids do most of the work. Who am I kidding- I’ll always help decorate!
Thank you for reading. God Bless, and Happy Holidays.
DavidSpeaks 