True Love is climbing up into the freezing cold attic for your wife to hunt down an errant unmarked box of Christmas items, which contained, ta-dah! the wire hooks, of course. Sneaky little bastards.
Amount times which I could completely cover our tree in ornaments: 4
Christmas ornaments purchased so far this season anyway: 8
My plan was to get the tree decorated tonight, because I can’t do it tomorrow (choir Xmas concert and dinner) and I can’t do it Thursday (see below) and I wanted it done this week which leaves Friday. The thing about tree decorating is that because I have so many beautiful ornaments that I have received over the many years, and I only get to see them once a year, they must be properly adored and appreciated before being hung on the tree.
When we were young, my sister and I would always get up early on Christmas morning, since anticipation usually woke us up around 6 a.m., and, knowing better than to rouse my dad that early, we would creep downstairs (if we had a downstairs at the time) or out to the living room and lie on the sofa or the carpet and just stare and stare at the twinkling tree. There was my mother’s glass Christmas tree with the bits of colored glass melted into it, and the old ornaments from Grandma’s house, the glass and gold bells and guitars, the white glittering string of lighted birds with outstretched wings. The big colored bulbs wrapped around the trunk and shone behind and through each glass ball. The house was quiet. The cats sat with us, curled and warm. Stockings were waiting.
Among the beloved items on our tree are a blue and gold jointed oriental koi, a clip-on blue glass bird with a peacock feather tail, a shimmering ball covered in red and gold veined skeleton leaves, a frosted ball laced with fimo roses, a tiny straw star with a wooden angel in the center, a small beaded circle of santa heads, a sockmonkey moose, a glass-ball-bottomed snow-filled santa, a tiny wooden skiing santa, 2 white porcelain cats with red ribbons representing Pooka and Toby, 2 gold and enameled candy canes given me by my grandmother, a framed photograph of smiling 6-month-old Karin sitting on Santa’s lap, a flat gold circle lasercut with fish that I received as a thank you for working a Christmas market when we lived in Germany, and many, many more. The blown glass cigar that my mom gave to Anders is NOT on my beloved ornament list, however. 😛
Our tree has tiny multicolored lights on it, because I am a deviant from Swedish Christmas traditions, and refuse to have only white lights on the tree. White lights are pretty, but colored lights? Are MAGICAL. No blinking, though. We don’t condone the blinking.
On Thursday, work is having a traditional Swedish julbord which means, literally, Christmas Table. There are very specific ingredients to a Swedish julbord, beginning with herring and smoked salmon, heading through meatballs, boiled potatoes, liver paté, smoked eel, Christmas ham, and ending with rice pudding with strawberry sauce, and gingerbread. My problem is that, later the same evening, I’m signed up to go to the annual AWC julbord in Malmö as well, at Sankt Markus Vinkällare, which has one of the best and most delicious feasty julbords around. I can’t make the mistake of eating julbord before eating julbord AGAIN.