Facebook Memory Book Tree

One decade ago – that’s how long ago we built this Christmas tree. We raided the reading room, where I used to have six bookcases crammed full of books (I still have the six bookcases, but I have done the anguishing work of paring down my collection over these years, letting go of some keepers).

I think of the work that we did. Find all the tall ones, and place them flat in a circle. Then, we discussed how to proceed. Find the next size down, a little thicker, and place them about a half inch inside the ring of the floor books. And so on, and so forth. String the lights, and light it up! At the top, as I recall, we’d placed a wooden chest with a Bible in it.

Every Christmas holds its magic, and over time, ideas and traditions come and go. I’m grateful today for the memories of the years, right back to the 1960s tinsel trees that I remember in my grandparents’ homes, the real trees that smelled like Frasier forests, and the Charlie Brown trees of the years that didn’t turn out like we’d planned. There was a tree that had little teeny spiders all in it the year I’d made a new sequined tree skirt, and they all climbed down and decided as a group to die right there in it, leaving little black spots everywhere. And, of course, the tree that leaned, that we fixed, then leaned, then we fixed, then fell with a hefty burglar size thud in the middle of the night, breaking precious ornaments and sloshing water everywhere.

To the magic of Christmas ~ and all it holds for us, past, present, and future – I raise my morning coffee. I’ll see A Christmas Carol on the stage of the Alliance Theater tonight in Atlanta, Georgia, and I’ll be thanking Charles Dickens for all of the versions of this classic Christmas tale as we know them today, as well as the traditions that had not yet arrived in England from Germany until he published this book – including the Christmas tree.