The Third Tradition of Christmas

The Third tradition that I enjoy at Christmastime is decorating our family tree with Ethan. This is the second year in a row that we've done this together. Last year was Kayla's first Christmas as a married woman, so she wasn't around. Mom and Dad go shopping and out for a date, so the E Man and I are left alone. I really enjoy doing this with him and I'm learning to cherish time spent alone with him, even though sometimes we clash! ; )

The Christmas tree is thought to be originated in Germany during the 16th century. It was brought to England when Queen Victoria married her German cousin, Albert and through an engraved picture of the royal family with their tree came over to the united states in the 1850s.  

Here's how we do ours:
We place The Peanuts Christmas CD in our CD player and turn up the volume.
Then, after we do some Snoopy dances, we dig into our Christmas boxes.
It's Ethan's job to set up the Veggie Tales manger scene while I set up our porcelain one. (He presses the star that sings "O Little Town of Bethlehem", Junior Asparagus' version, about fifty times during the course of its situating.)

Then we dig out our ornaments. Each ornament holds a special memory for me and makes me think of the people who gave them to us or Christmases past.
Ethan did a fine job with the tree. After giving him some instruction about how to space the ornaments, I had to exercise self-control and let him put them wherever. After all, it's more important for him to enjoy this experience than for us to have the perfect tree!

We always save this one little ornament for mom- it has a story. My Nana would let her kids decorate the tree, but when they went to bed she would rearrange it. She's got a great knack for decorating, so she probably was going mad by the ill-spaced and crowded ornaments!! Mom and my uncles would get up in the morning to find the tree decorated differently, but this little ornament that mom always put on was left in its original place. So, each year, we make sure mom gets to put her ornament on!

Here's our trimmed tree!

After all of the hard work, Ethan and I settle down for a Christmas movie- this year it was The Grinch- along with some hot chocolate and popcorn!

mmmmmm....

How do you decorate YOUR tree??