Molly and Edward danced around their freshly cut Douglas Fir with delight. Just last evening they went out from their little cabin in the woods to select just the perfect one. There it was, in amongst all the other firs, pines, and spruces, its branches waving in the crisp breeze, as if to say, “Me! Over here! choose me!” And so they did.
Father only grumbled momentarily as he crawled beneath its low lying boughs to saw it down. Then, they placed it on a toboggan and pulled it back home. They of course had to let it dry for a few days before they took it inside, so when the evening came to finally put their prized little fir in just the right spot, the siblings could hardly contain themselves.
After Father placed it securely in the stand, and Mother carefully wrapped the skirt around the base, Molly and Edward carefully lifted the lid to the box which held small, delicate treasures to place amongst the needles. They’d pull each one out and ask Mother from where it came: “Was it handmade?” “Was it passed down from long ago?” “Mommy, did I make this, or Edward?” “How old was I?”
Mother would respond from the kitchen where she was making batches of gingerbread. She took in a deep breath and sighed with great contentment. The smell of gingerbread, the crackling fire, the children’s giggles. Though it didn’t manifest itself through clapping hands and bouncing feet, Mother was just as delighted over the season as her children.
“We’re done!” Came a shout from the other room. Mother came in to inspect the task at hand. She gasped and smiled; little pools of tears filled the rims of her eyes. From the bottom of the fir, to nearly a quarter of the way up, in one definite section, were all the trinkets the box once held. Some made of delicate porcelain, others from felt and an exceeding amount of sequins. But each one also held a story.
“Precious memories,” Mother whispered as she stared blissfully at the fir, all dressed up now, by little hands.
Emily M.
Penelope and her little brother Sam stood at the window in wide-eyed wonder at the sight below. Their mother was not only walking down the street far below, and well before dark, but she was carrying something green! Snow fell softly on her and the small green treasure. “It looks like frosting!” Sam sighed. Penelope’s heart swelled with joy. She hugged her brother and kissed the top of his head.
The minutes passed like hours as they awaited the sound of the key in the lock. Finally their mother, Hannah, blew in the door with great ceremony, presenting her treasure to the squealing children.
“It’s really more of a glorified stick,” she laughed, unashamed, “but at least it has some green needles!”
“It’s beautiful,” Penelope hugged her mother as soon as her hands were freed.
“Here!” Sam came running in from the only other room the three shared. He had some paper stars that he had folded to hang somewhere.
“Those are stellar,” Hannah winked. Penelope laughed. Sam hung them tastefully.
“What else could we do for this little guy?” Hannah looked perplexed.
“I know!” Penelope ran to the loose board, pulled it up, and carefully lifted out the little box that held all her treasures. There were the three shells. With a painful breath she pulled them out and turned them over in her hands. Suddenly she sensed her mother behind her. Penelope felt a reassuring hand on her shoulder.
“Are those from—?” her mother gasped.
Penelope could only nod her head as tears began to sting.
——–timer
“From what?” Sam puzzled at the tears Penelope and Hannah’s eyes.
“From the day your daddy died.” Hannah pulled Sam onto her lap and wrapped her arm around Penelope. “They’re perfect.”
Penelope took a deep breath. She could still smell the salty waves as she felt the shells. The shells she’d rubbed smooth with her hands for the past year and a half.
“We could put some popcorn on it too.” Sam looked up at his mother. “Daddy loved popcorn.”
“Yes. Yes, he did.” Hannah rose and roused the troops to finish the job they’d started.
Cedar
“Awwwwww!” Jenny cooed. “Remember this one, Joe?” She held up a gingerbread man, covered in glitter, with a broken leg.
Jenny sat cross-legged on the floor in front of a big box, full of shiny balls and pieces of hand-painted clay. She was sixteen years old, and popular at school, not by being perfect-looking or snubbing people, but for being down-to-earth and fun and loving everybody. She loved her family, and she loved holidays.
Joe snorted as he took the gingerbread man from Jenny. It dated back to his preschool days. Joe was eleven and had grown rapidly recently; he didn’t know what to do with his hair, or his hands, or his elbows; he wasn’t popular like Jenny but he had good friends and was a happy kid. He was enjoying himself now.
Their mother was supremely happy, at that moment, watching her kids from the next room with a mug of tea in her hands. She breathed in the aroma of fresh pine. They’d picked out an eight-foot balsam that morning—the top just skimmed the ceiling, so her husband had trimmed it an inch. And then he’d spent a tense thirty minutes lying on the floor, shouting up in a muffled voice, “Is it straight yet?” and tightening the screws of the metal stand according to the conflicting directions offered by his wife and kids.
And there it stood in the living room, twinkling with colored lights. Nat King Cole’s Chestnuts Roasting On an Open Fire played in the background.
Jenny was extracting items one by one from the box in front of her and handing them to her brother, with commentary. Joe was adjusting the hooks on each one so they would have good grip.
“Oh this one is awful,” Jenny said about a framed picture of their family taken ten years ago. “We all look green. Look at our matching shirts.” Then she gasped. “Oh, Joe, it’s the baby one, from right after you were born!”
Joe made a face at the blue figurine of a sleeping baby in Jenny’s hands. She gave it to him, and he dutifully hung it. Neither of them discriminated against the ugly, weird, or broken ones. Everything went up, in the front.
That was one reason their mom liked them to do this job. She was too picky; she didn’t like anything tacky. But when she left it in their hands, everything seemed alright.
Emily H
Amy clapped her hands excitedly as her husband Roger finished standing up the great big evergreen in the middle of their living room. This one was evergreen not because of its biology but rather because it was plastic.
“Oh, I’m so glad we went artificial this year!” exclaimed Amy, imagining all the dry needles she would no longer have to vacuum up. Roger returned an ambivalent grunt as he slid the last piece into place.
He stepped back to survey his work and the two of them stood side by side, looking appraisingly at this centerpiece of holiday home decor. It was not an impressive sight.
“At least the real ones don’t come all smooshed up,” said Roger wryly, then kissed Amy on the forehead and headed outside to string lights on the roof. Amy sighed and then began the long and scratchy work of straightening out artificial evergreen limbs.
Five minutes later she was fed up. No sap, she reminded herself. No falling needles. And she kept going, working from the top down, but as she went she realized something else was missing too. No pine smell, she thought sadly. She suddenly remembered that she had a balsam-scented candle hiding in a drawer somewhere. Only too happy to take a break from the scratchy limb-fluffing, she skipped out of the living room in search of it.
She came back into the room a short while later, lit candle in hand, happily inhaling the lovely (albeit manufactured) scent of the outdoors. As she came in, however, she spied her children with an open box next to them. Five year old Agatha and three year old Timothy were reaching into the box and taking out the shiny, glittering spheres and placing them, one by one, on the still-bent appendages of the lower half of the artificial tannenbaum.
Amy looked at the top, at the place where she had already worked and where Agatha’s and Timothy’s childish arms couldn’t reach. And she looked at the bottom, every stick and twig pointed up or down or sideways, the wires inside them causing them to be twisted around each other in an infuriating manner. Yet somehow her children had managed to hang colorful little globes and bells and ceramic snowflakes in the most improbable places. It was so sweet that Amy felt her heart swell.
It was also outlandish looking. A squashed up evergreen, with a large collection of glitter-covered holiday accoutrements gathered closely together around the bottom twelve inches, with nothing above except a couple feet of fairly realistic-looking foliage at the very top, like a botanic toupee.
Amy burst out laughing. Agatha and Timothy looked up at their mom and smiled, pleased with their work and interpreting her laughter as pleasure too. Amy kissed both of them on the cheek and squeezed them tight. The smell of the balsam candle was now filling the room, carols were coming from the radio in an adjacent room, and the holiday spirit was strong.
Amy poured herself some eggnog (the holiday spirits were strong in that too) and let her children finish their work. It didn’t take long, and soon they had run off to other rooms and other projects, and she began the long and sneaky work of undoing everything they had just done and setting it to rights.
Elisa
The challenge: Word Exclusion Challenge! Describe children decorating a Christmas tree. You may NOT use the words:
- Christmas
- Tree
- Decorate
- Ornament
- Branch
20 minutes
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