The tree trimming at our house, it all looks so serene and full of the peace and grace of Jesus Christ, doesn’t it? You can almost imagine the God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen in the background and smell the hot chocolate sprinkled with marshmallows, bubbling in oversized mugs.
Here’s what tree trimming was really like in our house this year.
1. First of all there was definitely no hot chocolate because I was completely caught off guard by the need to trim the tree this year. Christmas? It comes every year? On the 25th you say? It only occurred to us sometime Friday morning, as we recovered from our turkey coma, that THAT very day was the ONLY non-working day we had free before December 25th.
2. …Which meant that I hadn’t even had a chance to remove all the Thanksgiving finery in my home. I piled the pumpkins and gourds and leaf garlands on my kitchen counters, creating an atmosphere of chaos! and clutter! This was a problem because I don’t do chaos! and clutter! well when inviting more chaos! and clutter! Christmas decorations into the house.
3. So we got started on the wrong foot! No hot chocolate! Chaos! and clutter!
4. I’m taking an online photo class from Willette called Finding the Joy and had received my assignment that morning to photograph our annual tree trimming festivities. Well finding the joy, INDEED, because my family gets highly irritated by my constant click, click, clicking with the camera. But I had an ASSIGNMENT! I was FINDING JOY for crying out loud.
5. So I may or may not have cried out loud out of frustration that our tree trimming was lacking joy.
6. I was doing the laundry in the midst of tree trimming. Frankly, folding a load of underwear does not get me in the Christmas spirit.
7. We allowed the kids to unbox and unwrap delicate ornaments, some of which are OLD (like 35 WHOLE years old). This was a mistake. This is tradition that won’t continue. Lesson learned.
8. We had to take a snack break during the “festivities.” Since I was unprepared, the kids had Super Mario fruit snacks, because nothing says Merry Christmas like gummies shaped like Luigi.
9. But really? It all ended up being perfect (in spite of myself and in spite of broken ornaments and clusters of ornaments on the tree. But mostly in spite of myself.)
10. We ended on a high note with a hearty chuckle about blue balls. Because nothing says Merry Christmas like, well, never mind.














