My homespun Christmas tree

Over the years I have worked to have a glamorous Christmas tree. I want it to be grand and inspiring. My theme has been gold and red, and over the years I have purchased a few choice strands of beads, garland, and balls to make this theme a reality. And it is beautiful.

Until we hang the homemade decorations. Then, underneath the paper snowman and the Q-tip snowflakes, lays my sophisticated treasure. I know it’s sophisticated down there somewhere, but my tree always basically looks homespun and family-oriented.

When Kerry and I were first married, our first few trees were live trees. We bought them while in college. One early year Kerry worked many hours at his job and I was just about ready to deliver our second baby. I didn’t have the physique to go buy a fresh tree. That year we hung lights on the wall in the shape of a tree. That was the year I decided we would invest in an artificial tree, so that I would have the power to put up the tree, no matter my condition.

As fortune goes, my husband’s grandmother, “Gammee,” gave us her old tree the very next Christmas. This tree was a cinch to put up. You simply slid it out of the box and gave it a good shake, and the branches unfolded. We hung our own lights, toy soldier ornaments, and the beginnings of our homemade ornaments. This tree leaned slightly, so we always set it so it leaned into the window, hopefully unnoticed. We loved that tree. After we decorated it, we would turn off all of the lights, turn on the tree lights, and watch the colors change on the ceiling as the lights blinked. We sang Christmas carols and loved Christmas.

Ten years later, I bought a taller tree with lights embedded in the branches. This was the beginning of my sophisticated tree. No more leaning! It was more complicated to put together, but the results were awe-inspiring! Now was the time to accumulate a few beautiful decorations for this tree.

But alas, I treasured the decorations that were growing in number made by our children in school. A star made out of popsicle sticks with glitter and a beautiful daughter’s face in the middle. An ornament-shaped cutout from flexible cardboard—again with a radiant face of our precious son in the middle. We were thrilled with each addition and put it joyfully on our sophisticated tree

Now, with most of my children grown and married, I decorate the tree. I pull out a little wreath, bent and folded from years of use and then storage. On the back is the name of our sweet daughter, written in her first-grade handwriting. Only the head remains of the little gingerbread man our son’s fifth grade reading buddy gave him while our son was a kindergartener. There’s the cross-stitched ornament that says, “First Christmas, 1982” that my college friend gave us for our first Christmas married. There are the sophisticated balls I bought one year that our youngest colored with glitter glue. On one of them is a message written on masking tape: “To Mandi from Steven,” a gift from the heart…made from what was available to a four-year-old. A bell made painstakingly from pins and sequins, given to me from our dear friend during graduate school. When she gave it to us she had said, “If I can’t afford to buy something nice, then I thought I would make something nice.” There is an ornament for the year each of our children were born.

Each ornament represents the love of family and friends over many years. “Love one another, as I have loved you,” Jesus taught in John 15:12. How grateful I am for the love that has been shared with me, reflected by the ornaments on my tree.

My tree still looks homespun, and there is still a glamorous theme underneath. But my heart is full of gratitude for the love our homespun tree represents, and oh what a priceless Christmas tree!

Beth Wright loves her family, making homemade chocolates at Christmastime, and being a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.