When I was growing up, we'd always put up our Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving. Every year my Dad and brother would get frustrated at the Christmas lights, which every year seemed to get more and more tangled. My mom would lay out all the ornaments and start unpacking the Christmas dishes, and we'd all put ornaments on the tree for hours until the last one was crammed wherever we could find a space. It was always very interesting to see which of the handmade ornaments had fallen apart that year and whether a particular Santa ornament had lost his legs again.
In recent years, however, we finally acquired a pre-lit tree, so the lighting isn't as much of an isssue, it's a crapshoot as to who's actually at home the day after Thanksgiving, and when Nicholas and I were in Prague, we found a replacement for the legless Santa.
But it's comforting to know that some traditions live on. There are still too many ornaments for the available space, Mom was buying more red bowls the other day, so there will certainly be dishes to wash, and we will always have the sombrero on top of our Christmas tree....Did I not mention the sombrero? Who knows when that started, but the angel atop our tree has as long as I can remember had the spirit of our neighbors to the south in her dress.
Chocolate caliente, anyone?
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