48 Years of Decorating

Levi and Victoria helped me decorate our house for Christmas last week, as they usually do. Levi carried the tubs of decorations up and down the basement stairs, to and from the storeroom, helped me set up and decorate both of our trees, and handled most of the outdoor decorating himself. Victoria set up both nativity sets. We've done it this way for several years, although this is only the second year Levi has decorated outside without Bill's help. 

As we were decorating, I noticed just how much stuff we have accumulated these last 48 years. 48 years! 

48 years ago, Bill and I were finishing the semester at our respective colleges, before he graduated and we got married just a few days before Christmas. We chose to forgo a honeymoon, instead opting to spend our first few days of married life getting settled in our new apartment in Lincoln. We had been gathering together the furniture we needed--a neighbor of Bill's folks gave us a gently-used double bed mattress, his grandma paid to have her old couch reupholstered as her wedding gift for us, and Bill had refinished our old round oak table and eight chairs, which we had scrounged from the Hotel Mary-Etta before it was torn down. The morning after our wedding, a friend dropped off an unexpected wedding gift, a ten gallon aquarium and enough fish to stock it, so we spent part of that afternoon setting up the fish tank.

We ventured downtown to open a new joint bank account, and stopped at a Christmas tree lot, where we purchased our first, rather small, Christmas tree. We picked up a single string of lights and took the tree home, where we placed it in the crockery pot we used as a garbage can. (It only leaned a little.) Then we decorated our first tree with the string of lights and the eight ornaments we had received as wedding gifts.

Bill's grandma had brought us a large, square, cardboard box, filled with the carefully wrapped pieces of the ceramic nativity set she and Bill had painted together when he was a young teen. We covered the box with the piece of faded, blue velvet she had sent along, and set most of the nativity figures on top, in one corner of our living room. I'm sure the camels and wise men had to sit on the floor next to the box, but that seemed appropriate, anyway.

In more recent years, this nativity set sits on the shelf. This year, Bill needed to reattach a couple of ears, and Baby Jesus' feet, but the set is nearly as beautiful as it was when he and his grandma painted each piece.

Bill's dad had insisted he trade in his beloved Camaro for a family car, and even arranged to pay half the cost of the blue Buick he thought would be the best car for us as we started our new life together. Reluctantly, Bill had traded cars in Gering over the Thanksgiving break, while I spent one last Thanksgiving with my Grandpa and Grandma in Bloomfield. The car dealership had gifted us a holiday turkey, which Bill brought back with him after Thanksgiving. When we picked up the keys to our apartment on December 1st, the turkey was the first item we "moved in," stuffing it into the tiny freezer compartment of our little pink refrigerator.

That turkey was the main reason we invited my family to Lincoln for Christmas dinner. Bill and I roasted the turkey, set the table with our brand new dishes, and welcomed Mom and Dad, Dan and Laura, and Aunt Ellen for Christmas dinner. We enjoyed showing off our new, freshly decorated, three-room  apartment, opened a few Christmas gifts, and ate a wonderful dinner together before our guests headed to Bloomfield to continue their holiday celebration with my grandparents.

That first year in Lincoln, Bill and I started a somewhat short-lived tradition of buying one new ornament each year to add to our sparsely decorated tree, but when I began teaching Kindergarten a couple of years later, we learned that ornaments were traditional gifts for students to give their teachers, so we were able to decorate our later trees with those ornaments, as well. Some of those early gifts still hang on our tree today.

By our second Christmas together, Bill's grandma had tatted and crocheted several snowflakes, and crafted quite a few other ornaments for our tree. A few years later, my grandma started giving us another beautiful nativity set that she painted, two or three pieces each year, until the set was complete. Other friends and family members have given us many beautiful Christmas decorations, too, and we've bought a few things ourselves, so now we have plenty of things to fill up our house for Christmas. But these things, although they evoke welcome memories of special people and Christmases in the past, are only a small part of Christmas.

After spending 48 Christmases together, Bill and I still believe in the baby whose birth we celebrate each year.

For to us a child is born,
    to us a son is given,
    and the government will be on his shoulders.
And he will be called
    Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
    Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

Isaiah 9:6

From our house to yours, Merry Christmas!