“O Christmas Tree, O Christmas tree,
Of all the trees most lovely.
Each year you bring to us delight.
With brightly shining Christmas light!”
— O Tannenbaum (Christmas tree) old German Christmas song from 1824 originally sung by Melchior Franck.
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Lights are brightly shining. Christmas decorating has started at my house. Emphasis on “started” because for me, decorating is a work in progress. It doesn’t happen overnight. Or even a week. Sometimes, it lasts until Christmas Eve.
Remembering.
That according to Mom, Christmas trees are put in place and decorated the Friday after Thanksgiving, not one day sooner. There was never a Christmas tree in her house on or before Thanksgiving. Ever.
My mother was a traditionalist in many ways. She also practiced “never wear white after Labor Day.” You could set your calendar by it when I was growing up. If the ladies at church were still wearing white, summer was not over. But when Mom put away her white hat, gloves, and shoes, we knew fall was just around the corner.
That “wearing white” thing fell out of tradition before the turn of the last century. But bless her heart, Mom was a diehard. She gave up wearing hats to church only after she and one other lady were the last of the faithful. Even then, she complained that she wasn’t properly dressed for church services.
“Never thought I’d live to see the day,” I remember her saying, “when a lady would go to church without a hat and gloves.”
“What is this country coming to?” is what Mom said after seeing for the first time, a brightly lit Christmas tree adorning the picture window a couple of houses down the street … a whole week before Thanksgiving.
Historically, Americans found Christmas trees an oddity at any time before German settlers brought the tradition to America in the mid 1800s. Back then, plants and trees that remained naturally green year-round held special meaning in winter. Evergreen boughs over doors and windows were hung to celebrate the winter solstice while looking forward to cold weather giving way to spring’s return.
I appreciated cold weather at Christmas when I missed it while living in Boerne in the Texas Hill Country a few years ago. Where cold weather, as most recognize it, is rare. Short sleeves in December were the norm. I even recall wearing shorts on more than one Christmas day.
It was also a Hill Country Christmas the time the kids and I enjoyed seasonal decorations so much that we left the tree up a few days into the new year. Until Valentine’s Day. We boxed up the Christmas decorations and replaced them with hearts and Cupids. And we loved it! So much so that we rolled right into Easter with it, decorating appropriately, of course. Memorial Day. Followed by Independence Day. And so on.
But that violated one of Mom’s other traditions. “Got to get the tree down after Christmas day.” When the last dish from Christmas dinner was washed and dried, she was on it. “The New Year is coming. Bring me the boxes for those lights and ornaments.”
The first glass ornaments were seen in America in the late 1800s. Electric holiday lights were not common in U.S. homes until rural electrification became widespread in the late 1950s. That was about the same time Christmas decorating began to change.
Mom rocked it in the early 1960s when she bought an aluminum Christmas tree. Her first artificial tree. After first scoffing at artificial trees. We spent nights watching the color wheel change hues on the metallic “leaves” instead of our still somewhat new very first television set. After all, the TV was just black-and-white.
But even with the new tree, Mom never wavered on her traditions. It still went up on Friday after Thanksgiving and was gone soon after Christmas day.
Whether keeping traditions or making my own, I still decorate. Helpers are dwindling. Kids are grown and gone, living off in other cities busy with activities and traditions of their own.
But I still do it. With music and memories.
“Rockin’ around the Christmas tree
Have a happy holiday
Everyone dancin’ merrily
In the new old-fashioned way.”
— 1958, recorded by Brenda Lee.
Thanksgiving is behind us. Let the season begin. The Christmas tree is up with respect to my mother’s traditions. And recalling many gatherings of Christmases past with family and friends,
I hope Mom will forgive me, however. Once again, I may leave my decorations up for a while after Christmas.
Just for the memories.
—Leon Aldridge
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Aldridge columns are featured in these publications: The Center Light and Champion, The Mount Pleasant Tribune, the Rosenberg Fort Bend Herald, the Taylor Press, the Alpine Avalanche, the Fort Stockton Pioneer, the Elgin Courier, The Monitor in Naples, and Motor Sports Magazine.
© Leon Aldridge and A Story Worth Telling 2025. Excerpts and links may be used, provided full and clear credit is given to Leon Aldridge with appropriate and specific directions to the original content.
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