Saturday Night Genealogy Fun -- Your Most Vivid Memories of Christmas Time

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans:

It's Saturday Night again -

Time for some more Genealogy Fun!!

Randy Seaver of Genea-Musing has our assignment for this weekend:

1) What are your most vivid memories of Christmas times past?  People, Church, Presents, Santa Claus, Shopping, whatever.

2) Tell us about them in your own blog post, in a comment on this post, or in a Facebook Status post.  Please leave a link on this post if you write your own post.

Here's mine:

There are lots of memories of past Christmases, but this post will focus on the Christmas Tree.

As a Child
Growing up, my mother liked artificial trees. When we lived in Pittsburg in the early 1960s, our fake tree was silver. She had coordinated colored balls. I think one year they were blue and another year gold. There was a colored spot light to shine on the tree, too. That house had a large picture window where this tree stood. Sadly, I have no photos of those trees.

When we moved to Walnut Creek, the fake tree came with us and was used for a few years. I remember that the branches had different colored dots indicating where on the “trunk” you poked the branch in. As we got older, we assisted in putting this tree up. Alas, it grew tired and old and was thrown out.

I think we all begged for real trees and a chance to put up homemade ornaments that we made at school. So, for a while we had real trees. My mother’s favorite was a Scotch pine. Dad put up the lights, we put on the ornaments, and then while we were in school, my mother carefully placed the tinsel.

At sometime while I was in high school, a green artificial tree came back into the house. At least it looked real. Mom placed cuttings from the yard around the living room to give the odor of a freshly cut tree. She would add branches of bushes with red berries that grew in our yard around for decoration.

Our tree was always put after December 11, as that was my brother’s birthday. However, my youngest sister’s birthday was December 23 so the tree was already up.

As an Adult
With our girls, we would go to a tree farm. A couple of times, the tree farm was located up in the Sierra foothills and we would cut Douglas Firs. Other times we visited the local tree farm and purchase pre-cut trees from their mountain tree farm.

Getting the tree was always after December 1, our oldest daughter’s birthday. One year we didn’t get a tree until December 23 and almost couldn’t find one at all. All the lots were closed but luckily Home Depot still had some and sold it to us for half off! Boy was it ever dry.

The ornaments for the tree range from small glass balls to Disney-themed princesses. My favorite ornaments are musical instruments and there are quite a few trumpets and drums. I also have a bunch of birds.

Here are some shots of our adventures at the tree farms.

Copyright © 2021 by Lisa S. Gorrell, My Trails into the Past. All Rights Reserved.