Sunday, December 09, 2007

O, Christmas Tree!



We had a Christmas party at our house Saturday night for the people in our Bible study classes and their spouses. The purpose was, in part, to force us to get our house ready for the Holiday. With none of our children coming home this year, we thought we needed a little prodding like this. The rest was social.

Counting Carol and me, we had 29 people. Carol crock-potted a turkey breast (a recipe from Micki) and fixed a chicken curry dish that we enjoyed last year in Kenya at the home of one of Mary's colleagues. The curry is served on a bed of rice (or wrapped in a chapati; one of our Indian friends brought chapati, which is sort of like a tortilla, but made of wheat, I think). The curry called for toppings, chopped pineapple, raisins, chopped onions, and chopped peppers, all of them together if you like (and I liked - mmmm!). For the rest of the feast, it was "covered dish", a formula for a plentiful and varied banquet.

This is what our Christmas tree looks like. (Click on the picture to enlarge. At the bottom of the tree, on the right hand side, is a little felt christmas-tree ornament that Walter made, and it has his photo in it.) Once I got the tree in place, Carol did the decorating. (I have to confess, I don't have much patience for tree trimming. But I help with untrimming it.) The tree is in our living room, next to the bookcase.

On the bookcase are some items from Christmas past, including two Nativity creations of Mary, one on a shoe-box lid (three shelves from the bottom, on the left) and the other made from Popsicle sticks (five shelves from the bottom, on the right). The two stockings hung on the bottom are for Carol and me (Carol made them years ago, and one each for the kids). The stocking toward the top of the right bookcase belonged to Juanita, and she bought it years ago from the 10,000 Villages store in Montreat. It is embroidered and was made in India, I believe. It's there in memory of her. She celebrates her first year in heaven this year.

On the top of the bookcases, on the right, there is a reindeer head, made from the base of a palm frond, the part where the rest of the palm frond is attached to the trunk. Mary and Walter each made one of these in pre-school. The other one is hanging elsewhere in the house.

The tree, of course, is also full of memories, as family Christmas trees become over the years, and the rest of the living room, den, dining room, and kitchen are full of such objects as well.

As people are finding out that we have no kids home this Christmas, we are getting some invitations for meals and the like on Christmas day. But we are going to drive over to see my sister Julia and her family in New Port Richey, FL, after we get up and open our presents. My niece Audrey is having a party at 4PM that day, and so we will go to that party and spend the night with Julia, her husband Greg, and their son, Gregory Paul. We will drive home Wednesday morning.

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