Sunday, January 3, 2010

My First Christmas Tree

I still remember my very first Christmas tree. It was way back in 1952, when I was eight years old living in Kenedy, Texas. I took a branch from a normal garden tree, not a fir tree at all, and planted it into some dirt I put in a cardboard box. This little tree, about two feet high, was decorated with paper decorations made by me and colored by me, without any adult help at all. I drew some birds, copying them from a coloring book, but I didn't trace them. I colored them and cut them out, but since they were drawn on regular paper, they didn't hold a very stiff form at all,but I was happy with them. I colored and folded paper fans and added my gum wrapper chains and I was happy. I later kept adding candy wrapper little things if the wrappers were shiny.
I made the whole box into a little villege by making folded paper houses and even a small bird house, with paper.
The following year, in Weslaco, my dad bought me a two foot fir tree at the grocery store and I made paper decorations for that one, using a book on paper folding to add more things. That tree had a sting of lights with eight little lights(about an inch long different colored lights).
Since then, I had a real fir tree evey year, usually two or three foot tall a nd I usually arranged it on a table by the window in the living room of my mother's house.
The first year, that I didn't have my own tree was the year I got married-1970! At Christmas i was living with my sister-in-law in Weslaco and she had a silver artificial tree.
The following year with a sall child, I bought a small three foot artificial, but green and very real looking tree. I used my old Christmas ornaments, some store bought ones I had added throughout the years. I kept using the same artificial tree for many years.
In 1992, my daughter bought me a 5 foot one, artificial and green too. It looked very real. this was not replaced until 2008 by a newer one.
This year(2009), I decided to finally go back to a real one, not having had a REAL one since 1969! This was the first year I didn't have cats or kids in the house! I loved the smell of fir --it seemed to fill the whole house with a real Christmas smell!
It was a wonderful experience, but it dried too much by the time I took it off, because I usually keep my tree until the 6th of January, the Day of the Three Kings.

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