Tradition Happens

We have certain traditions for the holidays, like most families do, even though I wasn't aware of all of them until recently. We've only celebrated Christmas for the past seven years, and I didn't think we'd even had time to make any real traditions other than the ones I purposefully keep, like huckleberry blintzes for breakfast and turkey for dinner. After the reaction to the one small change we had to make this year, though, I've decided that tradition is something that happens in a family, and not something you provide for them.

Our living room is very long and narrow with a wood stove and staircase in the center of one side. The way the doorways are situated, our new furniture will only fit one way, and there is no room for a Christmas tree. For the first time since we've begun celebrating mainstream Christmases, we had to cut a 4-foot tall hemlock instead of a full-size holiday tree. My husband brought it home in the evening and we let it stay on the deck overnight and it snowed, covering the little tree so the kids didn't really notice it when they'd gone out to play the next morning. But, the thought of getting our tree hadn't left their minds and later they prompted my husband to bring it in.

"You cut a small one?" They both looked at us as in disbelief. "A baby tree?" We explained about the room situation, but they didn't care. "This tree would have grown into a fine Christmas tree, some day. How will we fit our presents under a tiny tree like that?" they asked. It wasn't tiny, it's four feet tall...almost.

I assured them all their presents would be fine on the table under the tree, and we got out the boxes of decorations. This brought a whole new problem to light, as the small tree wasn't nearly big enough to fit all our ornaments on. We finally narrowed it down to just the two main groups of them; the antique ceramic ones, or the ones we'd made the year we began celebrating Christmas.

"Oooh, but these are so cute!" Jessica whined.

"You say that every year!" Katie retorted.

"Well, they are cute!"

"Not as cute as these," Katie said, holding up an old ceramic ornament depicting a mouse napping among brightly wrapped gifts.

"But we've always used the ones we made," Jess whined a little stronger.

"We've always used these old ones, too! Look at that puppy one, he only has one eye left," Katie argued.