Has your true love brought you three French hens yet? No? Well, perhaps these will do.
They are courtesy of Google Images and I couldn’t find where they originally came from, since the images came from another site saying “courtesy of Google Images”.
We don’t entirely follow the traditions we did when my children were growing up. Then our Christmas tree only arrived on Christmas Eve, brought by Baby Jesus, and remained up until Twelfth Night and even the Feast of the Ephiphany, the next day, on January 6th. But we are not terribly far from it and when Alice and her family came over Christmas Eve, we sang by candle light in the kitchen, Andy read the Nativity from Luke, we sang some more and then Baby Jesus rang his mysterious bell which allows us to go into the living room and see the quite small but very living tree he had brought, and all the presents around it.
I’m always a bit sad to watch the people who have their tree up the day after Thanksgiving, even before Advent has begun, and, thoroughly sick of it by then, throw it out the day after Christmas.
Not my way to celebrate.
We also had an artificial tabletop tree in the family room where we had our Christmas Eve supper together.
And I received some wonderful photos from Ingmar of his family’s Christmas in Maryland, with their Virginia Pine tree (these are not available here) which is lit by real candles, though only for short supervised periods of time! I don’t do this, but love to see it. My relatives in Germany also have real candles and sparklers hung upside down which are lit one at a time and are magical to watch in a darkened room.
My very tiny but beautiful tree…..Paul always said there are no ugly brides and no ugly Christmas trees!
My other tree, in the family room, with some of my snowmen underneath.
And I think those are all the pictures I can share today because WordPress keeps not actually making the other ones show up.
I’m still celebrating Christmas!
Me, too! I may put my tree up after Thanksgiving, but it stays up until January 7. I think I’d be a kook who’d keep a tree up all year if I could get away with it. =D
Yours are both lovely! It was fun to read the specific ways you celebrate with Jesus ringing a bell and bringing a tree. All so interesting.
You already know from my blog that we always have real candles on our Christmas tree, too
And just like you, our tree is put up and only on the day before or on the morning of Christmas Eve. All throughout the four weeks of Advent, we have the Advent wraths on our tables, but no Christmas tree. And all the Christmas decorations, including the tree, go down on January 6th.
In some years, we had sparklers on the tree, too, and lit them on New Year’s Eve.
You should see the tiny tree that we had this year (you can see it on my blog) but it was colorful and when the sun was on it, it was magical!
No ugly brides and no ugly Christmas trees…I like that!
Happy New Year!