Just Thinkin' About Bubble-Lites

I was so sure I'd begin decorating the house for Christmas today.  I cleaned to get everything ready. After sitting down for a cup of tea before getting started, I decided that it is just too soon to decorate though it is never too soon to savor and remember some of the simple joys of Christmas past.

Sunlight dances off the snow except where the dirty ice chunks border the street pushed aside by snowplows after our Thanksgiving Eve snow.  Television programming since Thanksgiving is laced with seasonal "favorites" and New Millennium versions of dreaming and wishing and hoping and buying and giving and getting.  Unlike movies of long ago, many still running, the new ones are more likely to tell stories through the lives of people of from diverse backgrounds. And somehow they feel even more commercial each year.

The little girl in the image above could have been me, blonde and blue-eyed, gazing with wonder at the Bubble-Lites.  These magical lites appeared one Christmas in the 1950's on gramma's Christmas tree amid the silver tinsel which was added joyfully one piece at a time after all the familiar ornaments that were like family had seemingly been placed in the same position they held the year before.  

It was amazing to see this new bubbling wonder shedding light on the homemade popcorn/cranberry strings we made with gramma.  The popcorn grown in her garden the previous summer and stored in the basement root cellar was popped by gramma in a heavy iron kettle and put into a large bowl while the cranberrys came from the grocery store "uptown" in West Concord.  Gramma threaded the needles with long heavy thread making "lazy tailor" strings upon which we created ropes of dark red cranberries and fluffy white popcorn.  The room was filled with giggles when popcorn "popped" off the string demanding to be eaten and cries of "ouch" each time we pushed too hard on the cranberry piercing our finger.  Gramma suggested that we ate more popcorn than we strung every year without fail.  This too was tradition.

Come to think about it we went to gramma and grampa's every Sunday after church for dinner and the afternoon.  Did I say every Sunday, year round, no exception? Yes, every Sunday, no exception. I have so many memories of those wonferfilled days and I have no memory of the Christmas tree appearing at gramma's house on a Sunday in November - or even early December. 

When my own grandchildren were small, we decorated my home the first weekend of Advent.  Once we finished, we had a homemade pizza picnic on blankets spread on the den floor, took showers, donned pajamas (gramma too), grabbed blankets and got into the car for our annual Christmas decorations tour of the city.  We capped the tour by going into our favorite ice cream shoppe and ordering ice cream. The "grands" thought I was especially daring to go in wearing my cream colored teddy bear flannel pajamas. 

Good thing the shoppe was close to home or I would have had to carry each one from the garage through the snow into the house.  Once home, we brushed our teeth, climbed into bed for our tradition of telling bedtime stories about when their parents were kids.  They fell asleep quickly rendering these stories very brief.

Maybe next weekend I will be ready to decorate my home.  Maybe...  Maybe not...