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| 1966 Sears Christmas Catalog |
It all started about the time that the Sears Christmas
Catalog came in the mail each year. From
there, the excitement just continued to build until the crescendo on Christmas
morning. The old Sears Christmas
Catalogs were about an inch thick, and full of dreams… dreams of what Sanny
Claws (how we pronounced Santa’s name back then) would leave us under the
tree. Us kids would pour over that
catalog time and time again, circling the treasures we’d found, and folding
down the corner of every page that had something on it we wanted to add to our
list… comparing with each other, and giggling and laughing, ooo’ing and
ahhh’ing, planning and scheming the entire time. We knew we couldn’t have everything we
wanted, so as time went on, we pared down our lists to just the few things that
we’d finally decided on. We made sure to
show Mom and Dad, but we knew it was really Santa that would bring it to
us. They were, somehow, just the
intermediaries.
Decorating for Christmas started well in advance of the big
day, and was always an all-day affair that started early in the morning with a
trip into the woods behind the house. We
always had a real tree, and Mom would give us our instructions of what we
needed to get (what type… pine, cedar, or whatever) with instructions not to
get it but just “so tall”… along with mentioning any other stuff we were to
find as well… running cedar, blue ball cedar, holly, mistletoe. In truth, we had to get multiple trees most
every year because Mom didn’t go with us to actually chop down the trees, but
she was the one that had to choose which one went into the house. So off we’d go, with the wagon hooked behind
the tractor, Dad driving, us riding.
We’d look at lots of trees… some pine, some cedar, choosing the two or
three that would be cut and loaded onto the wagon, then it was off to find the
running cedar and blue ball cedar.
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| Running Cedar |
Running cedar is a vine sort of plant that runs along the forest
floor in places, and is usually found in large patches with its frilly leaves
poking up out of the blanket of leaves.
We’d pull some up to use for wrapping around railings and banisters and
the like, making sure to clean off the leaves and dirt as much as we could
first.
Blue ball cedar is a cedar tree that grows tiny blue balls on its limbs and always has that Christmas smell to it. This was to be used to adorn shelves, mantles, flower arrangements, and tables. Then we were off to get a couple of branches of holly with berries… it had to have the berries on it. It wasn’t “real” holly without the bright red
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| Blue Ball Cedar |
Once we had everything, we’d head back and show Mom what
we’d found. She’d pick out which tree
we’d use and Dad would put it in the Christmas Tree Stand. (It would be the kids’ job to make sure it
stayed watered during its stay in the house.)
The trees were never the right shape since they had grown in the wild,
so they usually had to be shaped into the typical Christmas tree shape before
taking them into the house. The main
thing was that they had no gapping bare spots that couldn’t be hidden by
turning that side toward the wall.
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| Wreath flocked with Ivory Soap Flakes "snow" |
While we were gone, Mom would have cleared out the space
where the tree was going to go that year.
Several years she put “snow” on the tree by mixing Ivory Soap Flakes
with water (recipe here) and carefully placing it on the tips of each limb. It was a messy process that was done outside,
but made the tree look like it had been snowed on. Once the tree was inside, Dad put the lights
on the tree (the ones with the big screw-in bulbs, not LED like we have today),
and then ducked out to leave the rest of the decorating to Mom and us
kids. One of the first things Mom always
did was to cut the top out of the tree. It became a big joke as years went by, but there was a method to her seeming madness. These days, I understand why… the star (or angel or whatever) that was
on top wouldn’t stand up straight on the flimsy top of those trees, so the only thing a body could do was snip - snip and get down to a small branch that was sturdier.
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| My daughter's Name Ornament on my tree |
Mom would spend all day, and sometimes into the next,
completing the decorations all around the house… every shelf, every outer door,
every windowsill, even the mailbox… the house was transformed into a magical
land of dreams come true. We always
had an ornament that had our name on it (written with the “snow” that Mom made
for the tree… a tradition that I carried on to my kids when they were small
(though the names were written with glitter fabric paint instead of snow), and
still put them on my tree each year. One
of my favorite things to do, after Mom finished decorating, was to turn off the
lights in the room where the Christmas Tree was and lay on the floor and look
up at the tree. If you squint your eyes
just right, the whole room is filled with streams of colored light, twinkling
like magic. My favorite lights we put on
the tree were what we always called Bubble Lights. They were in the shape of a candle with a
bulbous “stand”. The “candle” part was
glass and filled with some sort of colored liquid that would bubble when the
light heated it up. Years ago, I found a
remake of those types of lights and was as thrilled as a kid on Christmas
morning to add that to my Christmas decorations that year.
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| Believe! |
Everything that happened during this time of the year just
added to the overall excitement that us kids experienced each and every
year. Every day built on the excitement
of the day before, and when Christmas Day finally arrived, we were nearly
giddy…. But that part of the story will
have to wait for another day.
Make memories, hold to family traditions… for it is on those
memories that the bonds of family and friends are woven. Wishing each of you a Christmas full of
blessings, joy, and the love of those most dear to you.
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| ~ Merry Christmas ~ |
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