One of my favorite things to do during Christmas is sit alone with the tree in the evenings. Sometimes I’ll add a mug of cocoa, turn out all of the lights (except the tree, of course), and find a cozy spot to sit. What follows is usually a quiet, contemplative fifteen minutes where I reflect on why I love the holiday season so much. I like to bask in the tradition of bringing the ol’ douglas fir inside, and of having special decorations that you only display once a year.
Growing up poor we didn’t have fancy ornaments or treasured decor for our tree. It was cheap baubles, strung popcorn, and a shit load of tinsel. I’m not knocking it, it just means that the only pieces of traditional ‘heirloom’ type ornaments that remained were homemade or ones gifted specifically to us.
When my sister and I eventually moved out and started to have our own Christmas trees my mom had us come ’round and take whichever ornaments from our childhood that we wanted. She also offered up a small selection of her colorful baubles for us to take to get us started. I’ve only purchased one additional set of balls since then, and I hardly use them. Turns out that I prefer a ‘storied ornament’ tree these days!
This year I ended up decorating the tree by myself (a first). We purchased it pre-cut from a lot at the mall and grabbed the shortest one that they had – actually we had to go to four places to find trees for sale! Really surprised me. We bought the tree on a Saturday night, and the next morning while my husband (heh ❤) slept I spent a lovely time arranging things exactly as I wanted. This is also the first year that I’ve done white lights instead of colorful ones. I used to think white was so boring, but now I can see its merits. Combined with our dark red, dark green, and brown wrapping paper we ended up with something quite cozy and festive.
In recent years we’ve taken on the tradition of adding an ornament to our collection every Christmas (something that a lot of people do and that I never really understood the appeal of until recently) and it really is pleasant to re-live the memories as we dress up the tree. We’ve even had the distinct pleasure of shopping at Kris Kringl in Leavenworth – Christmas capital of Washington. They’re a year-round Christmas store and a lot of fun to visit! I’ve only been in December so they’ve been insanely busy with roped off areas to create lines and maintain order. Totally worth it though.
Thanks for checking out my tree with me! This was as much fun to work on as I hoped it would be 🙂
x – happy beast
shot with my Pixel 2 XL
Uproot and Run 
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