CHRISTMAS TREES

CHRISTMAS TREES

When you get to be my age you collect a lot of recollections about Christmas. One of those is the trees we've had. When we were first married and in our new house, we were given our first Christmas tree by my wife's parents. It was a 5 foot tall aluminum one and it came with a rotating color light. You sat the light on the floor next to it and this three-color disc rotated in front of a 60 watt bulb. This shiny silver thing was pretty in a sterile sort of way. Of course, you couldn't put electric lights on it and you didn't have to trim it with the light going. That fit our budget at that time. One year we did away with the light and had only round red ornaments - or maybe they were blue. We probably used this tree for 3 or 4 years.

We had children from the beginning, of course. Three little girls in three years made Christmas really a lot of fun. Part of the fun was keeping the tree standing. We were resourceful enough to figure out that we could place our couch catty-corner in one end of the living room with the tree placed behind it. You couldn't see the tree as well, but it kept it standing longer.