By Sally Saint
At the beginning of December I got the family Christmas tree, a tradition and joy that comes around so quickly as the year flies by.
As I got down the box of decorations, the jobs were allocated – by my son I must add! He stood on a chair putting the decorations on the tree and I was the one given the job of getting out each piece and handing it over to the official designer and tree specialist.
I picked up each item and memory lane opened up. There were the handmade pieces that my son had made each year in school, and now at the age of eight, there is a sizeable amount of these beautiful creations.
Each is full of love and uniqueness and each I will never let go of, for they are part of my memory tree. Some have held together and some have separated, head from the body of a snowman, the eyes have fallen off, but it still has pride of place.
The Christmas tree made of lolly sticks, painted, and stickers adorning its shape, and many many more. They all give myself and my son the same amount of pure joy.
Then as I kept handing out the pieces, my history unfolded. The timely pieces of my childhood, baubles and bells from my childhood, and as we put them up I shared my memories with my son. There are so many of these decorations and the majority of them have stood the test of time; some are barely holding it together, yet they still have their place.
In amongst these magical items, there are the ones I have bought: tinsel, a fairy for the top of the tree, and the lights that shine on the boughs of our festive foliage.
It had this timeless quality about it, the ceremony of the tree. So it lends itself to our lives, as a simple lesson.
