la Vie Sirene volume 2 issue 4 - HOLIDAY TRADITIONS

Christmas Memories

by Bonnie Ramsburg Memories are usually something to cherish. And I cherish all of them that I can recall- especially around the holidays.

I have to admit, Christmas is my favorite holiday. And I have some pretty awesome memories.

Christmas Tree Mishaps One of our few live trees had a surprise in store for us. It was over 5-6 feet tall, and my parents knew they were going to have to cut some of the trunk off. They thought it was just because it was too wide to fit the tree stand. But dad soon found out that the trunk was bent in an odd way; he thought simply cutting a bit more off would do the trick.

No such luck, by the time he found a straight piece of trunk that would allow the tree to A) fit in the stand and B) stand up straight, our 5-6 foot tall tree ended up being less than 3 feet tall. It was the cutest tree I can remember having. It was also the first time we had a cat during the holidays, and we found out late at night that the little devil liked climbing trees. Dad ended up having to tie the tree to different pieces of furniture in order to keep it safe from the cat.

My first car was a Geo-Metro Hatch Back. Small, compact, really too small for me because of my size, but that’s another story. I decided that I wanted a real tree for the family one year while I had said car. I went to get it with my mom, and we fit it in the car with no problem. It slid in, trunk first, no bending or harming of the branches. We tied the hatch down and made our way home. After getting home, my dad looked at us, looked at the car with the tree top sticking out of the back and just shook his head, and proceeded to remove the tree (with some difficulty) from the car.

-18-