Abundance

It goes without saying that it’s been a while since I’ve published a piece of our life to the web, but after some help I was able to resolve my blog issues (and heartily recommend staying away from my previous host) and get back to it. The inclination is to feverishly write about everything that’s happened since August, but that might be a little dull so I’m just jumping right back in with the weekend and some photos and we’ll see what tumbles out.

We picked up our Christmas tree from the boy scouts this weekend and got it decorated and in the window, laughing about our Christmas tree being kind of like the charming but gaudy leg lamp from A Christmas Story. Admittedly, we are dorks about our ornaments, but we do both like getting a tree and have our collective families to thank for not having a naked pine in our house. We went through the typical and cathartic ohhing and ahhing as we pulled out the small balls and birds and stars and all the others and I tried to apply my mother’s touch to the light stringing process, though there might still be a few dark spots. Last year we didn’t put up a tree because we moved in December and it seemed a little more pertinent to unpack the towels and sheets before stringing the lights. Given this, we had forgotten some of our ornaments and were doubly excited to sort through them.

I think that my very favorite moment with a Christmas tree is just before bed when the house is settled and all of the lights are out and there’s this glowing, comforting and perfectly strange tree in the house, looking both slightly out of place and yet confirming all those sensations about what makes a house a home. Within the powers of nostalgia I can see my and my brother’s legs poking out from under the tree when I still had feet on my pajamas, I can smell scotch tape and pine, I can (sometimes regretfully) hear Christmas songs rolling endlessly in the back of my mind, and in all of that, I find great comfort. On Friday evening after the tree was decorated, some friends came over to our house and at the end of the night when everyone had headed out, leaving the sound of their laughter hanging over our sofa like a thought bubble, I stood in the quiet house with all of the lamps out just not ready to go to bed and turn out the tree lights, and silly and cliched though it may be, I did feel the peace that we talk about so endlessly during the holidays but rarely seem to find. While I think it’s mostly (hopefully) our good memories that fuel our desire to be in the holiday mode every year, there’s something to be said about the anomaly and absolute sweetness that is a Christmas tree.