Oh Christmas Tree!

Despite the fact that we always travel for the holidays, we still get ourselves a Tom and Kate Christmas tree to enjoy in the weeks before we leave. When we go to pick out the tree, we have only one criteria - how pine-smelly it is. Tom and I always spend a good 20 minutes with our noses buried in all of the reasonably-priced trees until we can agree on which one is best. Because "appearance" doesn't factor into our decision at all, we've ended up with some goofy looking trees in years past. But this year the stars aligned and we got a big, beautiful, smelly tree that had somehow found its way into the discount section. Oh happy day!

We got it home and filled it with lights. Being relatively newly-weds, we still don't have a ton of ornaments, but we love the ones we do have. My aunt Susan gave us a traditional "brides" ornament box for our wedding, which contains a variety of blown glass ornaments designed to represent the different aspects of marriage. These include a heart for love in the home, a house for family shelter, a flower basket for beauty in the home, a fruit basket for plenty, a teapot for hospitality, a bird for confidence, a pinecone for eternity, an animal for peace with nature, a fish for Christ and fertility, a rose for the Virgin Mary, an angel for God, and St. Nicholas for giving. There is also one "groom's" ornament - a blown glass pickle. My aunt claims not to know where the groom's tradition came from, but we have our suspicions...

We also have some ornaments that Tom's mom and I made out of remnants from Tom's grandfather Nichols' mobile-making hobby. Tom's grandfather made wonderful mobiles with glass, rhinestones, and mirrors - they are big, delicate, elegant pieces of art. We love hanging those on the tree and always think about Grandpa when we do.

Tom's Grandpa Hill has also contributed to our beautiful Christmas decorations by giving us a hand-made wooden Noah's Ark. Inside the lift-off lid is a whole boatload of jigsaw critters - camels, alligators, hippos, walruses, snakes, elephants, wildebeest, gorillas, buffalo, giraffes, rhinos, llamas, donkeys, kangaroos, moose, lions, and tigers, and bears, oh my!

One thing that we are still missing is a tree-topper, so for the last two years we have made our own with stuff we find around the house. This year we made it into a contest with some friends one night after dinner. There were some creative entries, including some geometric snowflakes (Tom), the baby Jesus in a crib (Kate), a tin foil Angel (Miriam), a large silver question mark (Mikey), and a Nichols-family-topper including tin foil renditions of Kate, Tom, Banjo, and Tom's bike (Cara). They were all so good that we've been rotating which one is on top.

We've only been married a short time, but it definitely feels like our own Tom and Kate brand of holiday traditions is starting to emerge - a little bit old, a little bit new, and a lot borrowed from our families. We hope your holiday is feeling as festive as ours is so far!