The Tree: Part Two

In high school I had a crush on a boy. Unfortunately, that statement probably sums up my high school career. I was once at a Christmas party at his house, and saw that his family had two Christmas trees: one upstairs, color coordinated to match the living room, and one downstairs, with family memories and handmade ornaments from when the boy and his siblings were small.

In college, a pageant public speaking coach and I were working on an improvisational speaking drill, where he'd give me a topic and I had to speak about it for a minute. Topic after topic came up, and he said "One last one- Christmas Trees."

"I used to envy those who had the color-coordinated, professional looking trees," I began. "My family's tree is not at all color coordinated and has ornaments that are handmade, have pictures of us as children, and even some of cartoon characters. My view has changed now, though. Instead of mismatched ornaments and a themeless tree, I see a beautiful patchwork quilt of family history. We can pick up an ornament and tell you what we loved that year. 'There's almost 30 years of history on that tree,' my mom says. And now I see the beauty"

We've continued our tradition of a tree full of history. Each year we all get a new ornament, something representative of the year, usually handmade. Each branch has a memory, an ornament gifted to us by someone we love. It's one of the craziest trees I've ever seen, and I love it that way. I have nothing against color coordinated, beautiful trees, but I could stare at my crazy quilt of ornaments for hours.

Tomorrow I'll tell you about some of those ornaments.