Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house Not a creature was stirring-not even a mouse....

Christmas has always been my favorite time of the year. I love everything about it. When I was little, I thought every year, the tree was prettier than the year before. I look at old pictures and see that we had some sorry looking trees, but I still thought they were beautiful.
We always had ice cycles on them, That was pretty much Roland's and my job to do. We were told to put them on one at a time, and we did, for the first two or three, but that got old pretty darn fast. So we would take a hand full and just throw them on. Mama was very patient with us. I think she would wait until we were out of the room and then rearrange the silver strands. I loved going through the boxes of decorations and remembering where they came from.
With modern technology, we now have a pre-lit tree. We use it over and over, but I still love it, or I should say love them, as we have one in the Visiting Teaching room, and the big one in the family room. My next couple of blogs are going to be dedicated to Christmas. Today the trees, next time, Santa.
We always had big lights on our tree, and you don't see a lot of that type of light anymore. Oh, they still make them, but most tree lights are the little ones. So to this day when I see the kind of lights we used as a child I get all excited--I know, Deanna, get a life....
My Grandma Davis' tree had lights that looked like candles. How pretty they were. It was like they had bubbles going through them.
I don't remember Grandpa Prince's tree, but I do remember an experience I had with him. One year I went down to Grandpa's and he didn't have a tree. Roland and I told him we were going to get him one. He tried to talk us out of it, but we wouldn't listen. We went up to the FLAT and chopped down a little one and took it too his place. He didn't have any decorations, so I decided to use all the Christmas cards he had received and put them on the tree. I know it was not the most beautiful tree in the world, but I know it meant a lot to Grandpa (oh, oh, here comes the tears) cause he looked at it, and his eyes watered up and the tears came down. You know that is the only thing I can remember about that Christmas, but what a wonderful thing to have as a memory.

There is nothing more peaceful to me, then to turn out all the lights in the house, and then turn the tree lights on. I could sit there for hours and watch the tree--as if it was going to do anything. But you know what, "The best of all gifts around any Christmas tree: the presence of a happy family all wrapped up in each other."--Burton Hillis.