What did country people do when they needed a Christmas tree? They went out into the woods and selected a nice cedar tree. There were always some nearby. That is what Dad did. He brought it in the house, placed it in a milk pail and surrounded the base of the tree with rocks. Then Mother filled the pail with water to keep the tree fresh.

Now came the fun of decorating the tree. Mother saved the icicles from the years before. They would go on last. The first to hang were the beautiful glass ornaments she had collected. They had been stored in their original cardboard box with dividers and tissue paper. They were not just colored glass glass globes. No, they had special shapes, such as a shell or a leaf. My brothers and I were not allowed to handle them. They were beautiful.

Next came popcorn. I remember trying to thread popped kernels on a long string of button thread, Mother's sewing thread of choice. It was so hard to do. They kept breaking as I poked the needle into them. I ate each ruined one and went on to the next. It would have been nice to have some red cranberries to add to the popped corn, but we didn't. I was only able to made a short garland that festooned some of the upper front branches before my fingers gave out.

One thing we did make with no problem was a construction paper garland. With a straight edge, I marked off strips of various colored construction paper and then tried to cut as straight as I could with my children's scissors. Mother made a paste of flour and water. My brothers and I pasted together circles until we ran out of construction paper. The garland was beautiful. The gold and silvery garlands to today don't hold a candle to the joy we had with our hand-made construction paper festooning the tree.

Since we didn't have electricity, there were no lights on our tree. Dad told us about placing lighted candles on the branches when he was a boy. Then one year the tree caught fire. No more candles. The only sparkle on our tree came from the icicles Mother so carefully draped over it all.

Those glass ornaments survive only in my memory. They have all since been broken and discarded. The trees my children shared were not cedar, but beautiful spruce. The only homemade ornaments were those made in Sunday school. I still have them. Our lighted tree today is beautiful but doesn't hold a candle to those of yesteryear.

Ask your grandparents what their Christmas trees were like. Up until WWll, Christmas decorations were much simpler than what we see today. We never heard of outdoor lights and figures like you see now, so we couldn't drive around the neighborhood to admire their efforts.

Our Christmas revolved around the Christmas program at school. Cookies and candies and small gifts made it festive. I still remember the piece my brother Rodney said during one Christmas program. I remember it because our entire family labored to teach him the words: “I'm not very big, but I can just guess, I can say 'Merry Christmas' just as well as the rest.”

Merry Christmas to all!