The Child in me at Christmas...

~~The Gayla Pink Apple~~

Everyone's a child at Christmas, right?    While getting out the Christmas decorations - stacks and stacks of plastic tubs neatly stacked in the garage - I wonder whether it's time to grow up about my Christmas decorating.

I mean, I began my Christmas collection some years ago.  I started decorating everywhere.  I like my house decorated for Christmas. I admit, with each added year, I don't necessarily like doing it - but I love it once it's done.   Kind of like my running - I don't always like doing it, but I love having done it. 

I have always enjoyed collecting special ornaments for the tree, for the table, and for the garlands.  I marvel at the splendor of my first European glass ornaments as well as the inexpensive cardboard reindeers from years past.  I admit I have amassed a large collection over the years.  My tree still adorns ornaments from my very first tree.  They might be in the back - you know, the spots where less fortunate ornaments often hang. They have a place in my heart.  I can't abandon them just because they aren't now as beautiful to me as I once thought. 

I always enjoy unwrapping my treasures. There is a real ceremony to it, unwrapping each one, unfolding the tissue paper or unpacking the cotton wadding that has cocooned the ornaments through the year. And, I remember so many special moments by looking at the ornaments, one by one, as I hang them on the Christmas tree. 

The garland above the sideboard in the dining room.

Back to the classic - red velvet ribbon!

Ribbons change sometimes but the ornaments remain.

Years ago, I began to focus on my collection of christopher radko ornaments as well as enhancing the garlands and tree with three or four times the strands of lights.  I expanded to decorating the dining table and chandelier lavishly. 

Back to growing up -  Is it time to discipline myself to a more restrained appraoch to my decorating.  Will the child in me at decorating for Christmas disappear?  I don't think so.  I love my aging collection of Christmas ornaments and decorations.  Enjoy being in my home, my holiday decorated home, soaking in the ready for Christmas spirit that ornaments and decorations and hospitality can genuinely create. 

I enjoy admiring my many years worth of decorations in the spirit of Christmas.  My house full of ornaments, garlands, trees, and lights to create my child like holiday spirit at Christmas.

 

The beautiful tree, twinkling and glittering, wearing its lovely burden of memory.  Every year the Christmas tree is the most beautiful tree ever, to me, anyway!   The memories and delights of my Christmas traditions, that I myself have created over the years, will remain. The magical garlands, lavish lights and ornaments remain. The music will still play and although I'll miss the three of us not sitting around the tree with tissue paper covering the floor, the Child in me at Christmas remains.


Tis the season,
Gayla