My Christmas Trees

Plaid wallpaper, how to string lights, felt mushrooms

Oh, how joy filled I am to wake up to another Friday morning, to wake to weather I could just gather in a jar and live in for the rest of my life, to a weekend stretched out in front of me, maybe pancakes Saturday morning, maybe breakfast sandwiches in a white paper bag, maybe an afternoon nap, maybe nine holes before it gets dark, maybe a Christmas movie, maybe not.

I suspect this afternoon, I’ll kindly ask my husband to go collect our big Christmas tree out of storage and bring it home for me to decorate, for I tried to be patient, I tried to wait as long as I could before creating our Holiday House. I thought maybe our library tree would suffice for the time being, but here I am, aching for stockings on the mantle and lights in the window, my wreath of oranges and apples and red plaid ribbon on the door.

While the girls and I walked our neighborhood this morning, I thought about this season, these last two months. How I see them in their entirety as Christmastime, because to me, I’ve decided (a while ago), Thanksgiving is just an extension of December 25^th. Thanksgiving is so innately Christmas…family at the dining table, cranberries and honey ham and homemade macaroni, fine china and football, pictures, home. So as I put my library tree up this past weekend, I thought that, really, I’m preparing for Thanksgiving, a branch of Christmastime. So when you put it that way…I’m late!

We have three trees: my big tree in the front window, an old shedding one that was my parents’ before it was mine, and my library tree, a brand new one my dad bought while at Dallas Market for our flower shop. And of course, this year, our newest one: Kit’s…a short and skinny one in a pot I stole from the flower shop this past weekend. (One could say Christmas is one big, slowly accumulated gift from my father.)

The big tree was the one we had for our first Christmas married, three years ago. I went back home that November, and my dad let me gather a collection of milky glass ornaments before he finished decorating the shop. I chose a soft gold that looks more like hay, a few cherry red, three big forest green balls, and four silver and gold glittered wreaths with red berries. I found four boxes of the tiniest champagne gold balls for $5 each at Homegoods, two yards of a golden brown fabric fluffed around the base, and I’ll replicate that tree every year from there on out. I remember having to relight it after Dad delivered it to our house, an hours upon hours process. I started my very first Pretty Little Liars rewatch since I was fourteen while I made my way around and around and around this tree, my hands covered in tiny little cuts by the end, unavoidable if you light a tree right, winding deep into the branches, molding the bulbs around the tips as if they grew there. (A sign of a well-lit tree is when you cannot track the wire when finished.)

Our first tree in our first house…

Our library tree was only born last Christmas, our first Christmas in the cottage. I thought of my baby girl, of her childhood, of her favorite ornaments and how this tree would make her feel, laying under the lights as a baby and then one day, coming back home, all grown up. I love how our plaid wallpaper and gold sconces make the library feel, filled with old books, textbooks I couldn’t bring myself to get rid of, my favorite Kate Morton books all stacked together. The library is what makes me feel like I live in a cottage, and so that’s the direction I went. Felt mushrooms from Hobby Lobby, balls of cranberries, mauve droplets made of crystal glitter, ornaments from my childhood: a candy cane and snowman made out of fabric, angels out of hardened yarn from our sweet neighbor Ms. Audie, and then my dad’s yearly Christmas Eve ornaments that we now take home with us, their tree’s branches heavy from two lives full of Christmases. Last year, he gave me my favorite of all, a pregnant snowman, her mittened hands resting in a heart on her swollen, snow-filled belly, “Mama” right in the middle. The tree skirt is homemade, the work of my mother’s hands, and the stockings are velvet embroidery from Garnet Hill (and I have two extra, just waiting).

That tree I think has shaped my Christmas interior design…I’m tending to lean towards the patchwork quilts and felted acorns, paper chains out of floral fabrics, dried fruit and warm plaids. In my mind, I started with the idea of little felt mice for Kit’s Christmas tree. Then the idea of nestling it in her wicker nesting baskets, as if it had grown there, right beside her crib. As I unpacked the library ornaments, I found two felted cardinals from my tree back home, and I knew they needed to be hers. Then as I wandered the holiday aisles at the grocery store this week, looking for warm lights, I saw a $4 garland of felt balls, chartreuse green (my favorite right now), deep pinks, navy. Her Christmas room has come together in my mind this week…and in the mail currently.

This week has just felt so infinitely sweeter, due solely to the presence of Christmas lights in the library in the morning for my coffee and the Today show, for Kit’s afternoon nap and my kindle, for our after dinner playtime on the floor. The power of lighting…that should be studied.

The power of Christmastime…what a gift to know it, to prolong it, to be immersed in it. I pray you wander into your attics this weekend, restring your trees, make your coffee, and sit amongst the lights, sit amongst the wonderful, childlike, joy filled, warm, familiar feeling of Christmas.