There’s Something Special about Our Scrapbook Christmas Tree

There’s Something Special about Our Scrapbook Christmas Tree

It’s beautiful. 

Flocked branches, glistening red, silver, and gold ornaments. Strategically placed and evenly spaced branches of holly.  Twinkling white lights. A gorgeous sparkling star on top.

It’s beautiful. I’m sure. In someone else’s living room.

That’s my dream Christmas tree… not what our family’s Christmas tree looks like.

Our Christmas tree, live and harvested locally from the top of a nearby mountain, is beautiful. Its shape is lovely. It’s full and fragrant. Our tree is fulfilling its purpose bringing joy to our family. The sale of it, and its peers, is providing for the family of the tree farmers.

It’s leaning slightly to the left.

It’s beautiful but it doesn’t have that “wow factor” like trees I used to only see in department stores and fancy hotels. 

Fancy Christmas trees aren’t just for fancy hotels anymore.

Now my social media feeds are full of photos of gorgeously themed family Christmas trees: snowmen, feathers, red trucks, 

Buffalo plaid seems especially popular this year.

Our tree went up just a few days before Thanksgiving. My Farmer thought I was rushing it a bit but hey 2020, I was ready for some seasonal cheer. As I carefully unwrapped and laid out each treasured ornament I realized our tree is themed.

It’s our Scrapbook Christmas Tree.

From ornaments from our childhoods to my grandma’s crocheted angel on top to our kids’ “baby’s first Christmas” ornaments. I can remember something about almost every pretty hanging on our tree.

Our tree tells our story. 

Cowgirl Snowman

She’s just so adorable. My now mother-in-law gifted me this the first year her son brought me home for Christmas. She said it made her think of me. I loved it then. I love it now.

Teensy

My cousin made this sweet little sheep ornament for me in commemoration of a lamb I was raising with a bottle after her mother rejected her. I called the lamb Teensy. She was tiny in stature but spunky. I loved that little lamb. She spent a few nights in the house. Her permanent home was a lot just behind the house with another former bottle lamb. 

I was pregnant with GirlChild while I was raising Teensy. It was a dangerous pregnancy, landing me on bed rest for the last few weeks. I delivered early and was hospitalized for over a week.  GirlChild spent weeks in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. We all finally made it home safe and sound but I was still faced with recovery and trying to get a 4-pound-when-she-came-home preemie to eat enough so she’d grow enough to stay at home and out of the hospital. 

Through all that, it had been months since I’d seen Teensy. My Farmer had taken over caring for her. One afternoon, when our new normal had started to take a turn for the better, I decided to check in with Teensy. 

“I gotta tell you something about your little lamb…” My Farmer said as he stopped me on my way to the lamb lot.

Teensy, who was ALL girl when I had gone on bedrest months before, now had testicles. I didn’t believe it… until I saw it… them… two of them. 

Teensy had developed female and male genitals.

My sweet little lamb had also developed some ram tendencies and gotten MEAN! As in so mean she/he tried to attack me when I entered the lot.

Every year when I pull this ornament out of the box, I chuckle to myself recalling the love I had for that lamb and the absolute shock I felt when Teensy and I reunited.

Bull Riding Santa

Our first married Christmas tree was decorated with hand-me-down lights, some dinky ornaments I’d used in college, the treasured few ornaments I’d inherited from my paternal Grandma topped off with gold and red glass balls my sister’s mother-in-law had gifted us for our wedding the previous May. 

I loved the tree but that whole Christmas season I felt like it just wasn’t “us” yet.

Plus, it was pretty bare. 

So that Christmas, My Farmer gave me this little Bull Riding Santa ornament along with a few others that felt like we were making the holiday our own.

Bull Riding Santa is cute and funny.

Bull Riding Santa is special. 

Special because of the sweetness factor coming from My Farmer. It was a departure from his usual practical gifts like the sleeve gloves and vet lube I got one Valentine’s day because “it’s lambing season.”

Bull Riding Santa has taken a few accidental tumbles. He has the super glue and missing hand we never found to prove it. Still, he’ll always be one of the ornaments front and center. Our kids will always fight over who gets to hang him on the tree. 

He’ll always make me smile.

Baby’s First Christmas

My momma’s tradition with the grandkids is to give them the traditional silver Baby’s First Christmas ornament.

GirlChild’s is a jingle bell. BoyChild’s is a stocking.

These ornaments remind me of that trip to the jewelry store. Granny having a meaningful conversation with each infant about what ornament they’d like (those conversations were pretty one-sided) and choosing the perfect message to inscribe on the back.

Our kids already hold these ornaments dear. I imagine that feeling will only grow stronger.

Proudly Hand-Made

Many of the ornaments we’ve collected over the years are those hand-made by our kids in Sunday School, Elementary School, and Christmas craft gatherings. 

Sure, I feel obligated to put these works of art on our tree. Really, I’d miss them if they weren’t there.

It’s also entertaining to hear the kids critique their former-selves artistic ability when they see their handmade masterpieces each year.

Daisy and Rollo

This was one of the ornaments on that first Christmas tree. Given to us by my thoughtful cousin. 

Daisy was my sassy little beagle-mutt. She was abandoned as a puppy at the farm of my dad’s best buddy, a man I considered an honorary grandpa. I’d been looking for a dog and she showed up on my 21st birthday. Perfect timing for the perfect little dog.

Rollo was My Farmer’s dog. Given to him by our best friends, he was an Australian shepherd/blue heeler cross. I named him Rollo because when he was a puppy his belly was perfectly round and the biggest thing about him. Our little Rolly Polly, even though he eventually lost the puppy weight.

Our love for these pups was big. They both lived to ripe old ages. They’ve both passed away. We still miss them so this ornament keeps them a little closer.

Pigtails

I have four first cousins on my dad’s side. Six of us grandkids total, including my sister and me. 

Our grandma was the type of grandmother who had each kid’s most recent school picture in a frame on the wall.

Sometime in the late ’80s, before personalized 1-hour photo gifts were a thing, my older cousin handmade our Grandma photo ornaments of each grandkid.

My cousins looked adorable.

Each one dressed in their Sunday best, lace collar dresses in the finest-for-the-time department store studio photo. My sister’s photo included.

My photo ornament looks like Cinderella discovered pigtails.

I’m standing on a chair in front of a counter of faux woodgrain formica. I’m not sure if 6-year-old me was washing dishes or making brownies. Brownies make sense because there’s something all over my face. I choose to believe it’s brownie batter.

My whole childhood when we gathered at Grandma’s to decorate the tree, each placing on our photo ornament, I was so jealous of everyone else’s stylish photos.

I mean, did my parents not have a decent picture of me?

When my grandparents passed, each cousin got their photo ornament. I still put mine on our tree. Our kids get a laugh out of it every year.

Looking at that little six-year-old, pigtailed, dirty-faced girl hanging on our tree today, I think she’s pretty cute. Even though I used to be embarrassed by her, I can’t imagine our tree without her.

The Angel On Top

She was my Grandma’s. 

I remember her guarding my Grandma’s nativity scene. She now tops our Christmas tree. 

She was my Grandma’s. That’s why she’s special.

Our Christmas tree no longer looks bare. 

It’s full of the memories and moments. The personalized ornaments the kids’ great aunts get them every year. The clay ornaments shaped like corgis, lambs and heifers I made last year with a group of friends in the basement of a community art center downing pizza and cold drinks. The styrofoam and felt elf that’s just big enough to cover the tree’s imperfection.

Maybe one day I’ll have a social media worthy themed Christmas tree. 

I’d love silver and gold with red accents of some of those sparkly sprig things. Maybe even sitting in the back of a cardboard old red truck. 

Maybe one day I won’t.

Either way, I’ll always have a Scrapbook Christmas Tree.

It brings me joy. It fills my heart.

It tells our story.