O Christmas Tree and....Something More Important

I love putting up our Christmas tree. I love pulling out the boxes I carefully packed away a year ago and finding the ornaments I cherish. I love turning on the lights at night and sitting in the darkness staring at the tree's warm glow.

I hate taking it down.

So, for this reason, the tree goes up the day after Thanksgiving, giving me plenty of time to enjoy my efforts and plenty of time to get the energy to take down and sort it all into the proper boxes. (Yes, I can be persnickety about which ornament goes where and hey how do you spell persnickety????)

I've been collecting ornaments since I was a kid. We have so many ornaments we could probably fill three trees with them. Each year for the past oh, I'd say 5 years I only put certain colored ornaments on the tree. Pretty much everything pastel, silver, or gold. I have a growing box of red ornaments that never see the light of day anymore. Burgundy or maroon will make it, but red, no. Don't ask me why. It's that persnickety thing.

As we've been antiquing more and more, of course, vintage ornaments make it on the tree. And I have several "ballerina" pieces I can't wait to dig out and hang. But this year we have a new type of ornament. Can you guess????

Dear Bebe actually has four of her own already! FOUR! And she's only 2 1/2 months old. Here is one given to her by her Dear Cousin.

Hope Dear Bebe likes decorating the tree because we have created a tradition in the Jillian's Pages household. That and watching "It's a Wonderful Life" while we do the tree.

But, there seems to be two types of Christmases going on in the world. One about the trees, the glitz, the gifts, the parties. The other is about what took place in a little town called Bethlehem.

There's nothing wrong with having gifts and parties, the trees and the ornaments...because I sure love the ornaments....but let's not forget what started it all.

That's why under the tree, we place a nativity scene.