A Merry Little Christmas Tree

First, thank you to everyone who stopped by to help celebrate my blip-birthday yesterday! Thanks for all of the kind wishes. I felt very well celebrated, and I am grateful to everyone! I will thank each of you individually in the comments as I get a chance over the coming few days. And now . . . let us keep on blipping, shall we?  :-)

Saturday was finally a day at home, and I had so much to do on a very long list. Some of them were fun things, though, like setting up two little Christmas trees. There is one tiny holiday tree we leave up all year in the living room, that just needed some dusting and touch-up. And my husband begged me to put up another, slightly bigger, little tree this year, and I was so startled by his request that I obliged.

You see, I used to be one of those Christmas fanatics, who put up the tree and decorate every living inch of space with festive this and holiday that on the day after Thanksgiving. As a child, I thought Christmas was the best kind of magic of all; if I could, I would have it be Christmas all year long. The year that I bought my house (2004), I bought a brand new huge Christmas tree on sale the day after Christmas, and I brought it home and decorated it, and we kept it up for another two months.

But somehow, I fell out of the practice of decorating. I think it may have happened starting around 2008, the year that I acquired both a tabbycat and a husband, and moved them into my house. With a rambunctious kitten in the house, I knew that I'd have to spend my hours defending anything that baubled, bangled, or glittered, and I just wasn't up for it. So my best recollection is that that is when we switched to just the one teeny-tiny tree, and we put it way up high where the cat couldn't get at it.

But on this day, I got out some decorations, and Dexter helped a LOT, and we moved the tiny tree into the bedroom, and we decorated another slightly bigger tree for the living room. The process was not as arduous as you might think, though I am here to report that tabbycats do NOT like being decked with red ribbons! No, no, not at ALL!

Then, in the evening, the moment came when we turned on the two tiny trees. The lights went on and suddenly, the house seemed transformed by Christmas magic. This photo depicts the slightly larger tree in the living room. The tree was not expensive, and it came with the lights on it. Most of the decorations are dollar store stuff - cheap, shiny, sparkly things - but it sure did SHINE!

And so it was that we enjoyed our first Saturday night with the feeling that Christmas was truly present in our home. Just two tiny trees made the difference. I had forgotten how good it feels to sit and enjoy your Christmas decorations on the day you put them up. The day before . . . just a normal house. And now, on this day . . . let there be CHRISTMAS!

The song to accompany this festive scene is one of my favorite Christmas songs, and this version is arguably one of the very best of all: Stevie Nicks and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, with Silent Night.