Hark!!

I wasn't going to bother with my Christmas Tree this year, but changed my mind. I spent almost all day doing this, feeling much more nostalgic than I might have thought. Most of my decorations were bought all at once at Main Street Discount a few years ago. I have lost all the traditional stuff we had as the kids were growing up....it was stolen by the woman who took care of my mother before she went into the nursing home.

I do have a few things, though that I feel strongly about. Thelma gave me a few ornaments to remind me of her. She loved Christmas and always had three or four trees, each decorated in a different theme. I thought of her as I put the ornaments on my little tree and felt sad, but glad I had them. My paper mache reindeer is a reminder of Alice, who lent me hers as a model so I could make one like it. Also from her I have a little stuffed moose she gave me one year. Sydney made some cards that I use as decorations, and Sherillee gave me a homemade ornament.Toni gave me the angel for the top of the tree, Jesse gave me the grinch. I still have the stockings that Mike and I had as children growing up, but I left them in the box.......mice had long since eaten the toes out of them. I like to think of them making nests out of the material.

My nativity scene is a strange (for me) nod to the religious origins of Christmas. I used to have the one I got from my maternal grandmother the year I was born, but that was stolen, too. I bought these figurines at a junk shop a few years ago, and the stable at the thrift shop a couple of years ago. Significantly perhaps, the group of figures was missing the baby Jesus and someone had replaced it with a tacky plastic facsimile. Last year I used it, but today I decided to correct the problem. I found one of my mother's old porcelain dolls that sort of went with the rest of the family, if somewhat out of scale (He is the most important one after all). The doll is a girl and was wearing a frilly dress with lace on it, probably made by my mother. I took the dress off and wrapped it around the baby backwards, in a more macho style befitting a boy. So far I have not figured out a bed for it, so I laid the doll unceremoniously on the floor in front of the audience of parents, wise men, a shepherd, some sheep and a donkey.

I like the Christmas story and each year have hope that I can give up enough of my logical way of thinking to believe in it.