To Christmas Tree or Not to Christmas Tree

December 15, 2017

To Christmas Tree or Not to Christmas Tree

To Christmas Tree or Not to Christmas Tree

Ann

I just read your piece about your CHRISTMAS TREE or TREE-LESS History.

Over my life time CHRISTMAS TREES have varied as well depending upon my emotional state during the season. 

Live trees purchased from stores, lots, farms, church or civic groups to 2-dimensional made of garland attached to foam core or 3 strands of garland hung down from a spot light or this year a Japanese screen with garland draped over the top 

but NEVER an artificial store bought one.  

May you, ANN experience and/or CREATE various of moments of joy this season for you.

* * * *

While writing this, initially meant as a Facebook Post, 

to you I created this NOVEL length BLOG instead.

A memory came back recently prior to joining a small group of writer friends for a Holiday lunch. The morning of the lunch I began remembering about other friends, mostly creativity, storytelling or writing friends, teasing me about the

length of my responses to their questions

a. yes/no

b. Tweet or headline length

c. internet length - 3 or more paragraphs in length

d. short story or 1,500 to 2,000 word length

e. novel - full length

the following is ranging between "d" and "e" length with photos thanks to technology.

BTW Merry and I were married on December 23rd, 1978. Originally we planned for Christmas Eve Day but during the planning we discovered the choice of date was creating problems for the Church, family,, especially children and friends.

We requested that all guests to our reception bring original Christmas Tree ornaments, preferably that they designed or made themselves.  Most guests were designer, architect or artist friends of mine and a few New Age friends of Merry's. 

We had special reminder ornaments made with our names and the year on them as gifts for our guests and fun stuffed Santas, Snowmen, Elf toy ornaments for the children.

We had everyone help us decorate our first Christmas tree as a married couple during the party.

Each year from then on we would buy a unique ornament to add to our growing collection honoring that specific year.

Merry died in 1998.  That first Christmas was very hard.

There is a long list of other negative, tragic things connected with Christmas which I emotionally deal with each year as I attempt to GET INTO THE SPIRIT.

This year was initially one of the worst.

when I read your post about your Christmas Tree and No-Tree history my mind began filling up with memories and thoughts I chosen to collect and share, initial with you as a Facebook post as I mentioned above but then decided to share it as a blog in this specific blog of mine

Alan's Letter to Friends Around the Globe

(initially this was a book project I started over the past 3 years)

I too have had a wide variety of trees or no-tree years depending upon my mood and my life at the time.

zero to one dimensional to two dimensional to three and even 4 dimensional trees

This year my mood has been especially down.

I have focused on photographing Holiday decorations in various locations beginning with my neighbor family across the street to shops in downtown Athens to searching in neighborhoods in and around Athens even one miles away that a friend had posted photos of on her Facebook page

Eventually after going on HOLIDAY DECORATIONS SEARCHING ADVENTURES I began doing a little decorating inside outside of my house without

SPENDING A DIME....

It started just before Thanksgiving when I noticed that the "WOLFF PACK", my neighbors across the street were once again out on the parent's lawn and roof installing their 2017 display

that started my daily or nightly searching for Holiday decorations until I found three truly bizarre extreme displays. One not far from our neighborhood, one just beyond that neighborhood about 3 miles and one miles away that I searched two different nights to find and ended up lost two nights at the same General Store in Good Hope, Georgia, population 291 (2016 census).

These decorations are in front of one house miles from my home in Oconee County that I searched for two nights.