O Christmas Tree

And why, you wonder, would I post this unretouched photo of my naked little artificial tree? Well, because this is as far as I have gotten with the decorations and I want to write about
Christmas trees.
My childhood memory of our trees is mainly one of putting tons and tons of tinsel on, one strand at a time. It was magical when finished but tedious, I'm sure, in the application. When I was old enough to practice this task, I think I was assigned the tinsel because I could put it on for hours while I listened to Christmas music, especially that played on the piano by my mother. I also remember heirloom ornaments from Europe that were the mercury variety. They were all lost when we moved to Montana and our moving van burned. Sad that all the photos were lost as well, so there is no way to see them now, except in my mind's eye.
When my children were growing up, we started a tradition the first Christmas after Eric was born of adding one ornament to our collection each year. Over the years friends added to the collection as well; and we started giving an ornament to each child every year - a collection that they were able to take with them when they started their own Christmas traditions. Our tree was never a special theme or color over the years, but was very eclectic and homespun. In fact, I regularly sought out handcrafted ornaments at the local Christmas fairs.
Recently, I have started purchasing star, snowflake and angel ornaments from the Metropolitan Museum of Art's yearly collectors' offerings. Eric receives the star one, Sara has the snowflake and I save the angel ones for my tree. They are beautifully crafted from actual art that the Met has in its collections. The angels come from a nativity set the Met puts up in its lobby every year.
I will try to post the completed tree at some point before Christmas.