by Doreen Martel

Created on: January 02, 2009   Last Updated: December 13, 2010

Each year, it was the same routine: the tree would be purchased the second Saturday after Thanksgiving, it was always too large for the high ceilings and would require a fair amount of trimming to fit into the stand and still hold the star on top (not to mention the requisite cursing).

Once the tree was upright, it would be placed in the same corner of the living room, between two windows so that folks driving by could see the tree. Then the 'special' solution of sugar and water would be carefully mixed and the stand would be filled with what would be the 'tree food' for the next month.

He would then make the trip up to the attic and bring down box after box of ornaments and lights that would soon adorn the tree. A quick trip to the store for 'icicles' (today many young people do not even know what these are!). It was always the same twelve boxes. We often wondered how in the world you could use twelve boxes of icicles on a 7-foot tree but we would soon learn that lesson.

Sunday morning would dawn bright and early and we would all gather in the living room to observe the careful dance that he had with the tree. Nine observant pairs of eyes would carefully watch everything that happened.

First things first

The start of the decorating process was bringing the tree out of the corner and then he would test the lights - string after string of lights would come out of their boxes, they would be plugged in and checked. These lights were as big as nightlights - in fact, they were huge by today's standards. These were not the little 'twinkle' lights we see today (and you can rest assured they were not terribly energy efficient either). A burned out bulb (which did not make the whole strand bad) was quickly replaced (always by the same color so as not to disrupt the flow) and this process was repeated for all twenty strands of lights.

Then one by one, carefully hooking one string to another they were placed on the tree - clip by clip they were attached to the branches starting at the very inside of the tree until soon, the tree had one thousand lights on it and was plugged in (behind the tree without an extension cord) but not turned on just yet.

Ornaments next

Next, came the ornaments - there were no plastic ornaments nor were there any cloth ornaments. Instead, some of the most breathtakingly beautiful glass ornaments in a variety of sizes and styles. Carefully and lovingly, each one was placed on the tree until the boughs were heavy. Each branch receiving at least

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