Pre-Christmas events

The Christmas season is always so magical and enchanting to little kids, and ours were especially so, to us anyway. Of course it would always start with selecting just the right tree. Absolutely no artificial trees!!! We would all go to the tree lot together and look over all the trees and decide on which one was just the perfect one for us. We would (well dad and the lot owner) tie it to the top of our car and off we would go. Dad would saw off the bottom of the tree a little bit and get it standing up straight in the tree stand. Mom and dad would put all the lights on after checking that they all worked. There were always a few that needed replacing. Us girls would be sitting patiently until it was time for us to help decorate the rest of the tree. Once we were finished hanging all the ornaments then we had to put on all the icicles---they all had to be hung one strand at a time to look beautiful. When all was finished dad would plug in the lights and we would all stand back and look with delight at our gorgeous Christmas tree. Then of course we needed to set up our nativity scene in front under the tree. After all, it was Jesus birthday.

I remember all the holiday baking that mom and dad did together. They really enjoyed doing this and everything smelled and tasted so yummy!!! Us kids got to frost and decorate the Christmas cookies--that was so much fun, not to mention a bit messy. lol I remember them making fudge and divinity---the hard way let me tell you. Back then you had a candy thermometer and these candies had to be boiled to a hard ball stage, some of them to a soft ball stage. That means when you put a little glob of it in a glass of water, it is suppose to form a hard, or soft, ball.

Then of course we all had our holiday shopping to do and wrap. I remember mom usually had a small stack of empty boxes in her closet she had saved up for gift wrapping purposes. One time she went in there and asked what ever happened to a large gift box. Without even batting an eye I said "that's the one I used to wrap your towels in!". Then, once it was out, I put my hand over my mouth because I had just told her what her gift was. We both just laughed and laughed about that one.

Several times we would go out driving to look at Christmas lights. We would for sure always go to this real ritzy neighborhood because they really went all out decorating everything. I will never forget the smell of our house this magical time of year. It smelled so good, like pine trees for sure, and sometimes liked mom and dad just baked something else "real smelly". Yum!!

I will add, you cannot get the same pine tree smell, that a real tree has, out of an aerosol can!! People do try to do this, but they are just deluding themselves.