Hiram and I had a hard time getting excited about decorating the Christmas tree. Maybe it’s because we don’t have kids at home to turn the chore into a magical event. But this year, if we hadn’t been hosting our extended family’s holiday gathering, we might not have put it up.

Call us Scrooge and Scroogette.

We had to divide and conquer to get the job done. I unpacked and placed other decorations in their traditional spots around the house while Hiram put up the tree and strung the lights and garland. Once he was done, I hung the ornaments.

Call me a perfectionist.

I hung the straw angel, given to us by my closest college friend on our first married Christmas, and the calico ornaments I made that year for our Charlie Brown Christmas tree. Then came the satin ball from our first grown up workplace, the now defunct Sky Ranch for Boys. Next came treasures our kids made when they were young: paper cup bells, construction paper wreaths, wooden frames around kindergarten pictures of Allen and Anne.

Call me sentimental.

After that were ornaments from former students, souvenirs from our visit to Alaska when the kids were 12 and 6, the funky retro Old Navy ornaments Anne and I found on clearance when she was in high school, and gifts from co-workers at Bryant School, the elementary building that was torn down a few years ago.

Call me blessed and thankful.

Finally, I opened the old shoebox and unwrapped the antique ornaments Mom divided amongst the sibs and me when she gave up housekeeping. Fragile glass balls she and Dad bought in the early 1950s. Even more fragile baubles she inherited from Dad’s parents about the same time. Trinkets I placed high on this year’s tree to keep them safe. Treasures that brought to mind the stories Mom told about their owner, the grandmother who died before I was born, as we decorated the Christmas tree each year of my childhood. Gifts that led to a change in my attitude and my name for Christmas trees.

I call them memory trees.