How Lovely Are Your Branches

Our living room Christmas tree is in the stand and ready to be decorated. The boxes of ornaments are stacked up and the music is on. Tradition number two is what we have for refreshments while we decorate. Every year I have to go out and buy Fruit Juicy Red Hawaiian Punch and Sprite and those round containers of Christmas cookies they sell at Walmart for around $4.00. It's high class all the way at our house! We mix the Hawaiian Punch and Sprite together, and serve it in the Christmas glasses my brother bought for us over 25 years ago. If you've never tried the cookies, you should. They are delicious little tea cookies and to us they taste like Christmas. Of course we make all kinds of cookies and candies of our own, but we keep buying these for tree-decorating. There were years where I had to run all over town to try to find them, but Walmart has carried them regularly for quite awhile now, thank goodness!

Our tree never looks like the trees you see in magazines, but we're okay with that. The ornaments that hang on our tree have meaning to us. Each of my three has a small pair of mittens we bought the year they were born. Those are what they look for first.

My favorites are two worn and dirty white bears. One is missing its eyes, and I have no idea what happened to the third one. One year when I was a child, my mom let us choose an ornament at the Woolworth's store downtown. I chose the three bears that came all together in one package (I'm always looking for the best deal!). Now it's just the two, but they will always be my favorites. I've looked all over to try to find a complete set, but no luck. I guess they wouldn't be the same anyway. 

Aren't they a sad-looking pair?  But I love them anyway. They represent childhood Christmases to me.

So this is where you're supposed to see the big reveal, right? The beautifully decorated Christmas tree in all its glory. The results of our hours of work, every ornament in just the right place. The colorful lights glowing and the red beads shimmering. 

Oh, but did I mention that we have two kittens in our home this Christmas season? Here's what our tree looks like most of the time:

And here's why...

So here's the reveal. It's the best I can do.

We think it's pretty, even if it's a little light on ornaments at the bottom. And in the end, it's the time we spend together, and the memories that we share, that make our tree more special to us than any perfectly decorated magazine tree could ever be.