𝑪𝒉𝒓𝒊𝒔𝒕𝒎𝒂𝒔 𝑻𝒓𝒂𝒅𝒊𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏𝒔 🎄

Christmas Eve and we are at Midnight Mass. Both girl's heads are solidly on my shoulders and I am engulfed in the true richness, candles lit as they only are once a year on Christmas Eve. The smell is intoxicating and carols roll over me like a wave, memories seeping out of every verse, remembering. I believe one lady got her coat out of the mothballs. It is cold outside. I am wide awake although it is past midnight. I will not sleep until three a.m. when all the presents are finally wrapped and Santa places them under the tree. 

Christmas Eve is Church and a gathering of friends and family. Mexican food, chili, tamales, and all the rest is our tradition on Christmas Eve and then Christmas day is Turkey and presents. The end of the church service with candles lit and all singing Silent Night, sometimes even in German and Spanish.

When I was growing up our tradition was to cut down our own tree on my Uncle’s ranch. We would be riding in the back of the truck rolled up in blankets including the dogs. One year Fritz girl, a wonderful big mixed breed jumped out of the truck after a deer. She came back, no deer. The tree we cut down would be perfect, we thought, but upon arriving home it would appear somehow like the Charlie Brown tree. We loved it.

When my Mother, Betsy, was a newlywed, my great-grandmother, Blanche Muelder came over and taught her how to make the rolled cut-out sugar cookies. And that became our tradition every year to have a cookie decorating party when we would ice and decorate the cookies with sprinkles of every size and color. Those cookies are the absolute best. I will share the recipe. As the season progressed those cookies became sought after, the last ones eaten at our take-down the Christmas Tree party. We decorated our tree with real cookies.  They would taste so delicious when we would finally eat them, a little sprig or two of cedar mixed into the icing. We left the bottom cookies for our guests, the dogs had licked those. For many years, traditions ebbed and flowed, changing, but the cookie decorating always remained.  

Tree ornaments, are memories, brought out one by one and admired so filled with nostalgia. I know where I got every one of my ornaments, each one telling a story of my Grandmother’s tree, my Mother’s, ornaments from my childhood trees, and our children growing up. This year I might let two paper ornaments go after they became torn into pieces. Maybe glue is still an option. I can’t say goodbye yet.

As our ornament business kept expanding I am adding so many of our ornaments to our tree weighing it down. We laughed when we realized how many ornaments are really on the tree.

Blessings and Love from us to you this Christmas season. May the New Year bring Peace on Earth and Good Will to all. Thank you for being part of our walk. We celebrate the true reason for the season the birth of the Christ child. So deck the halls and sing and if the lady with the mothball coat sits next to you this year give her a hug.