Oh Christmas tree…

 

I remember the first Christmas tree Mr T and I had.

It was for the Christmas of 1989, we’d been together for about 6 months and he’d moved in stopped going home. We decorated an indoor “happy” plant with tinsel and put pressies around the pot. It was special.

Then when we moved into our own house just before Christmas the following year, we invested $20 in a 2nd hand tree and started collecting decorations. When Miss T came along we started the tradition of buying a new ornament each year. We now have a mix. We also have a new fake tree (well, it’s now new-ish).

Why am I telling you this? Because tomorrow is the first Sunday in December- and that’s the day our tree goes up each year. We pop the cork on a bottle of bubbly, prepare platters of nibbly bits (that we serve on ceramic trays that Miss T has painted over the years), and load the Christmas music mix onto the ipod- making sure that there are at least 4 copies of each of my favourite songs, and absolutely none of the ones I dislike the most.

Then we put the tree up. Hubby and Miss 16 usually have at least one argument about how she doesn’t read his mind and know exactly what ornament he wants her to pass next. Miss 16 usually has at least one comment about how I’ll never manage to hit the high notes on Mariah’s version of All I Want For Christmas, and hubby usually makes at least one comment about why it’s shuffled again onto All I Want For Christmas, and at least one question about if I’m sure that it’s only on the mix once, and at least one query about why The Little Drummer Boy never seems to shuffle on. Then we’ll argue about which power cord is the one that shorts the rest of the house and how he thought we were going to label it as such last year.

Nothing matches on our tree. It’s a mix of themes and colours and glitz and home-made. It’s chaotic, and it suits us perfectly…and there is a memory in every single last bauble.

There’s the pohutakawa from New Zealand,

the pandas I bought in Hong Kong when I was there just before Christmas in 2008,

and the bird I bought at the Christmas markets in Perth in 2009.

The gold bear that Sares pointed to from her pram when she was 1,

the surfing Santa the year she was 5,

and the cupcake Santa when she was 6.

Last Christmas her choice was a Frosty the Snowman.

This years bauble is below- it’s a posh one that Miss 16 and I bought when we were in Melbourne the other week. It’s pink, it’s delicate, it has bling, and it features a dog. What more could you want in an ornament?

What’s on your tree? Are you a mixer or a matcher?