Deck the Halls

I vividly remember when I was a little girl my mom had an enormous box of all the Christmas ornaments each individually cloistered in nest of tissue paper and she would hand out ornaments one by one and we would delicately place them on a tree branch and take turns coming back for more hearing the history or significance behind each ornament.  At least that’s how I remember it.  So I, too, now nestle all my ornaments in one gigantic box each individually wrapped in tissue, most labeled with the dates from trips or when we acquired each ornament.  Several are from my childhood, gifts from Grammy, relics from ski trips, birthday presents from kindergarten classmates of mine… others are from our trips – fragile hand painted eggs from Prague, an Eiffel tower from Paris, a Venetian straw hat, a hiking boot from Heidelburgh, a wooden fish from Kauai, a hand carved nativity scene in olive wood from Jerusalem.  I don’t’ buy many souvenirs when we travel, but I have tried to pick up a Christmas ornament or two along the way.  And the ones I hold most dear are the hand prints and footprints of each of my babies on their first Christmases.  So handing these treasures over to well-intentioned, overzealous, sometimes reckless four and five year olds is like handing your best china over to a baboon.  But at the same time, these are what memories are made of.  I’m trying not to crush their spirits as I try to help them not crush my momentos.  I kept hearing myself saying, “This one needs to go up high, I’ll get this one” or “Here, you can hang this one any where you like…”  This was how we navigated through. (And I think it went better than last year!)   When we were done, the tree looked… interesting.   Kiefer hung every ornament I handed him on the same two branches. Carter hung most of his on the very back of the tree that faces the wall.  Griffin, thankfully was napping through it all.  I told Jim under my breath that I’d fix it later and complimented everyone on a job well done as we poured some hot chocolate to celebrate.

Now, each day I get to redecorate and fix the tree.  I’d forgotten the joys of Christmas with a two year old in the house.  In fact, I was thinking, since entering the realms of motherhood, I’ve yet to have a Christmas when the tree wasn’t being attacked by some little person.  Five years of tree wrecking and at least two more in our future. (No, I’m not expecting another baby -just anticipating that Fletcher will follow suit.)  They each have their own signature approach to tree trimming, as we’ll call it. Carter used to climb under the tree to gaze up at the lights. I can picture him helping me decorate and missing every branch and having a pile of ornaments scattered all over the floor.  Kiefer, my most oral child to date, would put everything in his mouth and attempt to digest the ornaments -especially those resembling candy canes! And Griffin’s signature is quite -well, alarming!  I think he misinterpreted “Deck the Halls” to mean, “Duck, take cover, here he comes to throw something else at the tree!”  He literally has been throwing things into the tree!  First a ball, then a tractor or two, or five!! I literally pulled FIVE tractors out of the tree!  FIVE!  I had to take the suction cup ball away from him because it was stuck to our family picture that’s framed in the family room.  And the little “Let it snow” pillow that we brought out of the Christmas box was just too heavy for him to be throwing around, so it got relocated to spread a little holiday cheer in Jim’s office.  He doesn’t understand why I’m keeping Christmas cards in a basket in the hallway and he keeps delivering them air mail down the basement steps. Today, he picked up the kid-friendly Mary, Joseph and Baby Jesus and towed them around in his trash truck.  Yesterday, I found Baby Jesus stuck on the washing machine with the magnetic back.  I couldn’t help but laugh at the fact that baby Jesus was washing all our sins away!  I think I might keep him there all year!  I keep trying to laugh and take to heart as a sign in my newly redecorated sunroom that reads: “Believe in the magic of Christmas”