o tannenbaum

Yesterday the Christmas tree went up in our household.

Each year, I glance at the work it entails and think, do I want to do it? And each year - so far - I remember the endless hours of the lovely glow of it all through the day and night until bedtime and push myself to make the effort.

As I unpack the ornaments, one by one, I unpack my memories. The history of some elude me, but mostly they all have a past that is precious - ones the kids made in school, others from family, friends, colleagues - or ones that I bought myself, like Emily. Several years ago I happened to spot "Emily" in a Target bin and fell in love with her old-fashioned goodness. She's Anne of Green Gables, Pippi Longstocking, Understood Betsy all rolled up in one! And now she smiles from my tree each year.

 The ornaments are not only bridges to friends but to places where we lived - one from a hardware store in Kansas, some from the Conran's somewhere here in Northern VA, others from New York City, Tangier Island, on and on. They are like a little hello across the years, a small road map.

Perhaps I love the process so much because it's purely mine, not something handed down from my childhood as we seldom had a Christmas tree - lots of presents, candles glowing in the windows, the smell of baking cookies, music, but trees weren't a big part.

I remember our first year in Newfoundland when we were boarding with a sea captain's family. Our bedroom was small but we hiked into the woods out back and brought back a tiny tree and set it on our trunk. One of the family's teenage sons commented, "My dears, that is a some naked tree!" And so it was, but it was the beginning of our own tradition.

And that, in a word, is the beauty.