That missing week this year between Thanksgiving and Christmas is pinching me!  The number of days left between now and Christmas is fewer than the number of tubs of Christmas decorations in the loft.  Consequently, I’m skipping over the tubs of Santas and Christmas-y snowmen.  I’ve decorated the mantle above the fireplace with snowflakes, pinecone trees, and wooden skis – all things that will hold us through the winter season.  They will stay put until April when Easter pushes us through the snowdrifts.

On the shelves where all the Santas usually gather, we’re displaying Christmas cards from friends and family.  And wherever there are safe spaces for burning wax, I’ve tucked votive candles or tapers into the mix.  In the coming nights, my goal is to light the candles as I did on the first night after decorating all day.  Their flickering light is quiet and peaceful.  Simple and calming.  

With only two weeks until we travel to England for Christmas, I decided to put up an artificial, skinny, pre-lit, pencil tree.  Every year, we put a real tree up, and it was tough to let that tradition slide.  However, I remembered that last year the tree we bought from the tree lot drooped and started shaking off ornaments a week before Christmas.  The needles turned brown and dropped.  No matter how much water we put in the tree stand, it was simply done.

In a move so quick it startled Bill and the boys, I dismantled it: I took every ornament off and placed it on the living room table, grabbed the tree from the top and tipped it over, lugged it to and through the door and out to the curb.  Needles and water sprayed everywhere from the wood floor and carpet through the back door and all over the deck as I maneuvered it out.  This was the normal tree-removal procedure – only it usually takes place on January 6th.  With the dead tree out, I set up three little fake trees that I scavenged from the barn loft and re-hung all the ornaments.

So this is not the first year we set up a fake tree.  I had ordered the pencil tree, a very skinny fake tree, a couple years ago thinking I would put it up in the dining room and make it a themed tree, perhaps all snowmen or Hallmark ornaments or the big glass baubles from Aunt Marsha.  Instead, its slight silhouette is in the living room, filling only a quarter of the space our very round Frasier firs usually take up.  I was near tears putting this pitiful thing up.  Its main branches dropped down into place and then I fanned out the smaller branches to fill in the gaps.  Rather than flimsy live (but dead) wood, each branch is wire and shaped easily into place. 

As I felt the strength of the wire, it became clear what ornaments would be hanging on the tree.  I wouldn’t be gathering four tubs of ornaments and picking through them to hang a variety from each tub on the tree.  The handmade lightweight ornaments, the kids’ ornaments, the plain glass balls, and the thin glass icicles are taking a rest this year.  The theme is practical: I have a tree with strong branches; I would be hanging only heavy ornaments – the ones that didn’t all make it on the soft branches of our past real trees. 

I hauled up from the basement one small but stout tub labeled: “heavy ornaments: Aunt Marsha, Aunt Mary, clay, metal, wood.”  In past years, only a handful of these ornaments would fit on the tree, tucked inside where the thicker branches could support their weight. Not the case this year. I’m liking this little change in tradition with “our Aunts’ tree.”

Wishing you merriness and light…