Tweaking The Tree

Sometimes when I walk from the living room to the dining room, I tweak the Christmas tree.

I see a bare spot and move an ornament to fill it, or I see too many red ornaments together and move some of them, or I see that Santa is looking into the tree again and I turn him around so he is looking out the tree.

But most times when I walk from the living room to the dining room, I see an ornament and it gets me thinking.

I look at the paraffin drum major, and I wonder how old he is and guess that he goes back to the 1940’s.

Spuds MacKenzie reminds me that yard sales are good sources of cheap and sometimes historic ornaments.

The ornaments we bought on vacation make me re-live the days in Aruba or the time we took a cable car to the top of a mountain in the Tetons.

I check out the dried starfish from Galveston and make sure they are out of the dogs’ reach.  The starfish may be dried and old, but they are organic and, in the dog’s eyes, very edible.

I look at the cream-colored ornaments and remember when I went to a yard sale and told the woman there that I was looking for Christmas ornaments.  “Oh, my mother just died and I will sell you her ornaments.”  I proudly display these ornaments on our tree, thinking that I am continuing some other family’s tradition.

I see all the candy canes and think about the time Randy and I got our first tree and candy canes were the cheapest way to fill up all the bare spots.

The pretzel man from Czechoslovakia makes me remember when I used to work for the May Department Stores headquarters here in St. Louis.  Salesmen from ornament companies would come to headquarters and leave samples, in hopes that the May Company would place big orders for their ornaments.  Once a year, May Company employees would get to purchase the samples, and that’s how I got the pretzel man.

The merman says New Orleans to me.

I look at the Empire State Building ornament and think about the New York friend who sent it to us soon after he had witnessed 9/11.

I realize that I have a personal relationship with most of the ornaments on our tree.  So, maybe I am not tweaking the Christmas tree --- the Christmas tree is tweaking me.

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Here is a 1950 Christmas song (Everybody’s Waiting For) The Man With The Bag that has been updated by Black Prairie.  The song video, complete with a yule fire in the fireplace, is 4 minutes long:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVjzPQTQI1Y

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NOTE: Doug's best stories have been collected into a book: Puppy Out Of Breath.  Price = $11.  You can purchase a copy at  http://www.puppyoutofbreath.com