I look at the photo and the years drop away. Two small children stand by the Christmas tree they have just finished decorating. The little girl’s eyes shine above the ruffled collar of her yellow nightgown. The little boy’s wide grin stretches from head to pajama-covered toe. They are proud.
The green pine branches sag downward to the floor, loaded with “stuff”—crayon scrawled manger scenes, Popsicle stick sleighs, homemade green and red construction paper cards covered with childish scribbles.
This old picture, taken when my children were little, tells a truth as clear as icicles in a Minnesota January. Crosby Christmas trees have never been visions of perfection. Crosby Christmas trees are cluttered and unglamorous, but always filled with sentiment.
When I was growing up, decorating the holiday tree at my parents’ house was often a hurried, last minute affair, and on several occasions, the fully decorated tree actually tumbled over, but somehow, my childhood memories are still happy ones. The toppling Christmas trees of my youth imparted the message that perfection isn’t important when it comes to Christmas.
The first Christmas tree of my marriage was tiny. We didn’t have money for ornaments, so we made them. We bought one solitary set of lights, and hung glass balls that glowed and shimmered, reflecting reds, greens and blues. It was the most beautiful sight in the world.
When we moved to northern Minnesota, we started cutting our own trees. Dick cut down one of the many small spruce trees scattered beneath larger trees on our property, and we decorated with the most inexpensive of items. Often we strung cranberries and popcorn.
Children entered our lives. Betsy was only 13 days old when we gently placed her baby seat under the tree in our house on Highway 61. She slept and never noticed the multicolor lights shining on the glass balls above her tiny face. Tom arrived a few years later, adding more childish zest to the holidays.
Each year our family tree’s lower branches became more heavily covered as the children hung their homemade ornaments as high as their little arms could reach. I was beginning to wonder how much more the bottom branches of a tree could hold when the children reached the upper grades and lost interest in making decorations.
Many years later I still hang their Sunday school and kindergarten projects on the tree. Paper chains dripping with smears of white glue. Clothespin shepherds. Crudely cut-out and seriously glittered construction paper stars, and they bring back precious memories.
Sentimentality continues to rule my heart during the holidays. I still have the red bells knit by a seventh grade student and given to me in 1965, my first year of teaching. They hang on my Christmas tree along with my mother-in-law’s glitter-encrusted turkey wishbones, Dick’s handmade glass baubles, Betsy and Tom’s handmade school projects and my mother’s 1950-teapot ornament.
Sometimes I talk about cleaning out the overflowing boxes of Christmas decorations that clutter my storage area, but never get around to actually doing it.
I simply can’t part with any of them.
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