My New Kentucky Home

A blog about faith and family, home and homeschooling.

Embracing the Ugly Christmas Tree

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Embracing the Ugly Christmas Tree
 

Note:  I wrote this post a few years ago when the days of having a lovely themed Christmas tree seemed an eternity away for me.  This year, for the first time EVER, I have a tree that is all about appearance and not so much about memories.  But don’t think for a moment my old “ugly” tree has been retired!  Now I’m just fortunate enough to have TWO trees! 🙂

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I flip through the pages of my favorite decorating magazines and skim over dozens of pins on Pinterest. The Christmas trees I see there are unreal; glistening pyramids of evergreen perfection.

There are hundreds of branches.  Thousands of lights.  Beautiful garlands of beads or large swaths of organza ribbon are draped about and dozens of shimmering orbs dangle from boughs.

Everything coordinates.  Everything is perfectly sized and spaced and each piece is strategically positioned.  It’s like art–a mosaic made up of a thousands tiny parts that fit together to create a flawless masterpiece.

And then I look at our tree.  And I sigh.  Because our Christmas tree is nothing, NOTHING like that.

Our tree is spindly and ridden with gaps and a few of the lights are out.  Our tree is wrapped in a dizzying disorder of wooden-beaded garland and decorated with the most bizarre mix of ornaments you have ever seen in your life.

There’s an array of Hallmark ornaments that have been played with until pieces are missing and parts are broken off.  (We still hang them because the kids insist that we do.)  There are ornaments created in Sunday school classes and ornaments we’ve made in homeschool.  There are ornaments I’ve received as gifts; snowmen and angels and tiny Nativity scenes, and ornaments I’ve picked up at after-Christmas clearance sales, just because.  There’s a random smattering of ornaments I can’t even account for–where did this come from?–and eight or 10 red plastic icicles.  RED icicles?  And candy canes, because the kids want candy canes on our tree.

Our motley collection of ornaments is made up of all sizes and shapes and colors, all placed on our tree in the most haphazard way by four children who are usually tripping over one another to claim the best spots among the branches.  Not that it really matters what spot they pick–they’ll all be rearranged a few dozen times before Christmas anyway!

There is nothing thematical or uniform or particularly lovely about our tree.  It certainly is nothing like the trees I see on Pinterest or in any of the decorating magazines I like to thumb through.

Our Christmas tree isn’t art.  It’s more of a scrapbook of our lives, a collection of imperfect mementos of the moments and people and things closest to our hearts.

  • There are the six ceramic ornaments handmade by a mother many years gone; good, sturdy ornaments that 30 years ago adorned another “ugly” tree.
  • There’s the baby carriage ornament, a gift after the birth of my first baby, and played with by each child since until it’s now a wheel-less, but sentimentally precious baby basket.  
  • There are four stars, purchased in hard times, that remind me of God’s ability to turn things around. 
  • There’s the ornament from the Sunday school student who said thank you and in doing so made me feel like maybe, just maybe, my small efforts could make a big difference.
  • There are handmade ornaments, crooked and glue-dotted and sometimes adorned with tiny photographs of those whose awkward little fingers formed them, proud gifts of love to a mom who prizes them still.

They are precious, priceless reminders of what matters most, memories hanging on a tree in the form of random broken trinkets and lopsided crafts.  And the more I look at our Christmas tree, the more I realize that what it lacks in elegance, it more than makes up for in warmth and in sweet, nostalgic charm.

My “ugly” Christmas tree tells me I am blessed.  Even with all of its imperfections, our tree is PERFECT.

 

 
 
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Comments

  1. Lyli @3-D Lessons for Life says

    Tanya, I am little jealous of your tree…. that puzzle piece ornament is adorable! You have given me a great idea for a DIY Christmas gift for my hubby… 🙂

    Thanks for linking up with Thought-Provoking Thursdays today. I've been thinking about your post from last week quite a bit and trying to tell myself that "no" is OK. I can already tell that your blog is going to become one of my favorites. 🙂

    Blessings

  2. jviola79 says

    Tanya – I have to admit, our tree is similar to yours. But I love how you put it….our tree is a scrapbook of our lives. That is beautiful & something I will remember as I look at our tree this year. This is the first year that now both our children are married. Each was given a box of those ornaments that were special or unique to them. So their trees will have pages from our scrapbook as well as they begin their own scrapbook 🙂 Thank you for blessing me with these thoughts today. I am so glad that I visited from Thought Provoking Thurs.! Merry Christmas!

    • kentuckysketches says

      That's a wonderful idea–to pass along those ornaments for their own "scrapbook pages"! It's amazing the special memories tied to those random little trinkets on our trees.

      Thank you so much for stopping by today!

  6. Shannon @ Of The Hearth says

    Wonderful post! Our tree is very eclectic, too, and I wouldn't have it any other way. Every year when we put the ornaments on it we can reminisce and tell the stories behind the ornaments. This is a priceless tradition!

    • kentuckysketches says

      I think my 13 year old noticed for the first time this year that our tree isn't exactly fit for a magazine cover. It's amazing how, to my kids, our tree is the most beautiful thing in the world, whether everything is all matchy-matchy or not!

  7. Lisha says

    This is so sweet! We have just a 3-ft tree (purchased when we lived in a tiny apartment many years ago!), and each ornament has a story and a special memory…I'd take our little tree over the big and glittery/well-coordinated ones any day in our home. (Who am I kidding, a tree that was well-coordinated would stick out like a sore thumb at our house! 😀 )

    Thanks for sharing this! I'm your neighbor over at the Walking Redeemed link up this week 🙂
    ~Lisha

    • kentuckysketches says

      I'm pretty sure a beautiful, well-coordinated tree wouldn't suit our house either. I like the humble one we have. It really couldn't be more perfect for us! 🙂

      Thanks so much for stopping in and reading, Lisha!

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