My mom was meticulous about keeping our house clean. Everything had a place and everything was in its place (except for the junk drawer ... but everyone has a junk drawer!).
This memory comes from when I was four, or five, or six years old ... I do not remember exactly.
We usually picked out our Christmas tree on the Friday or Saturday after Thanksgiving. We would hook the team to the sleigh and go into the forest. Dad usually had a few trees he had scouted during the summer while riding that he thought might make a good Christmas tree. We would find a tree to cut down and take back home.
We always took the tree to the basement for a few days to warm up before we put the tree up in the living room.
Mom had a wonderful collection of Christmas decorations. A couple of my favorites were a Mary and Joseph set and a Santa and Mrs. Claus set (I believe Mom made both sets). Mary and Joseph were both wearing clothes made of burlap that was styled and stiffened to hold their shape. They were painted a golden color. Santa and Mrs. Claus were made from bowling pins. The figures in both sets were about 15-18 inches tall.
Often, Santa and Mrs. Claus would stand on the piano during the holidays. Mary and Joseph would stand on a side table or the stereo top.
We usually took the Christmas decorations down shortly after the new year began or during the week between Christmas Day and New Year's Day. One of the fun parts of taking down Christmas decorations was hauling the Christmas tree to the garbage burn pile and lighting it on fire. I liked to watch the spruce needles burn up quickly.
One year in the early 1970s, we did not take Christmas down right after the new year began. I am too young to remember why. Maybe it was around the time that Kerianna was born. So, Mom might have been sick or worried about Keri who was always sick for her first year because she was allergic to milk. Maybe we were just "busy" that year.
Regardless of the reason, I think the Christmas tree was taken down but the Santa and Mrs. Claus figures were still sitting on the piano. I found an Easter Candy hidden by the Easter Bunny inside of Mrs. Claus' hand warmer muff.
It is funny how my memory works. I know I found the marshmallow bunny in the hand warmer muff. However, I do not remember when we moved Santa and Mrs. Claus back to storage.
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| this is the type of marshmallow bunny I found |
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