We got our Christmas tree on Tuesday. We’d planned to go on Monday, but the weather wasn’t good. It wasn’t any better on Tuesday, but we didn’t want to wait any longer and went anyway. The people that Stacey and Hannah work for sell Christmas trees (among other enterprises) and every year they let their employees take a tree for free, which is nice because they are very nice trees. So Tuesday evening we braved the snow and drove up to the tree barn on Greenman Hill in Hebron Township. Kurt, Jillian, Phi, and Freyja followed us in their car. Their tree (an artificial tree) has been up for weeks, but they wanted to see the tree barn. We meandered among the trees – some of them ten feet tall – and finally made our selection – a seven foot Fraser fir. The man in charge baled it for us and we loaded it up and brought it home.
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| Choosing a tree. |
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| Baling the tree to bring home. |
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| The tree at home. |
Decorating the tree is a long process at our house. First, just getting the tree to stay upright in its stand takes some time. After that, putting up the lights takes an hour since we have to check the lights and find that elusive bulb that is sabotaging an entire string of lights. After the lights are on, we begin hanging ornaments. There is a traditional order to this. Each of our children has at least one ornament that is “their ornament” – one from their first Christmas and others that have special meaning to them. These go on the tree first. Then follows other special ornaments – the purple pinecone, the little red train, the ceramic goose, the little wooden Pinocchios, etc. – each accompanied by its story. There is a set of ornaments that only I put up made of delicate glass with concave facets that go back to my childhood. When all the ornaments are up, I finish the process by draping the branches with strings of gold beads. The shortest and oldest of these strands comes from Stacey’s childhood trees.
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| Setting it up. |
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| Stringing lights. |
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| Trying to find the bulb that's sabotaging the whole string of lights. |
When all is done, we step back and admire our work. We comment on how this year’s tree seems especially beautiful – our judgement every year. With the tree up, our house decorations are complete and a different feeling seems to settle on the house. When the tree is up, especially at night when the house is dark except for the light of the tree, the Christmas magic grows stronger. Over the next days we will sit around the tree and play one of our favorite Christmas pastimes – “I See Something,” where one of us names an ornament and the rest try to find its location on the tree.
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| Finished. |
We had some bitterly cold weather last week. On Thursday when I got up, it was 7° with a wind chill of -15°. The next morning it was 0° with a wind chill of -18°. This was our first, but certainly not our last, taste of sub-zero weather this winter. I say winter, but it isn’t technically winter yet. The solstice comes this Wednesday, the 21st – that happy moment when the darkest day arrives and then immediately (but not noticeably for a while) the days start to lengthen again. Along with the solstice this week will come children arriving home to spend the holidays with us. Daniel and Kale arrive that day. And on Friday, Tabor, Rachel, Hazel, and June are coming. Then things will get even more festive here.
Another big event will take place on the 21st – Joni (Geoffrey’s wife) is scheduled to deliver her baby – their third child, a boy, our fifth grandchild, and our first male grandchild. We’re so excited to see him and are praying mightily that all goes well with the delivery.
On Thursday we went to the opening night of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. We are big Star Wars fans and were looking forward to seeing it. We were not disappointed. It will be at our theater for several weeks so we will go again when Daniel gets here.
Friday evening was our branch Christmas dinner. We had about 50 people there, which is good for our small branch. We had ham and funeral potatoes, all sorts of salads, side dishes, and desserts.
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| At the branch Christmas dinner. |
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| The branch Christmas dinner. |
On Saturday evening we went to a Christmas concert sponsored by Stacey and Hannah’s employers. The performers were a string ensemble from New York City called the Shattered Glass Ensemble. The concert was held at the Consistory in Coudersport. The performers were excellent. They performed some classical pieces like Vivaldi’s Winter and a suite from Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker along with various Christmas carols. They ended with an audience sing-along. It was great. Unfortunately, the weather was not good and there were many empty seats.
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| The Christmas concert. |
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| The Christmas concert. |
After our spell of bitter cold, the temperature rose a little over the weekend and it rained on top of all the snow. It’s made things an ugly, slushy mess. It was 37° degrees when we left for church this morning and when we went out to get in the car, we found it sitting in a very large puddle of water. The township snow plow made a bank of snow at the edge of our driveway when they plowed last week that is perfectly positioned to dam all the melt water and make a pond of our driveway. Stacey had to put on boots and wade out to the car and back it onto dry land so the rest of us could get in (remember Stacey is our driver – she’s not distracted by flora and fauna like I am). By the time we got home from church, the temperature had dropped below freezing and the driveway pond was frozen solid. Now it’s snowing again.
The week ahead should be full of fun and excitement as Christmas makes its final approach and family arrives – by plane and automobile for some coming home, or by birth for one coming to live on earth. It’s the most wonderful time of the year.
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| Sunrise on a zero degree morning. |
