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Christmases Past and Present (Written 12-13-'95)

The Christmas season this year has brought back a lot of memories of Christmases of long ago.

In another story, I wrote about getting our Christmas trees from our woods on the day before Christmas, quite different from the time line now for putting up Christmas trees. Last Christmas, on New Year's Day, many trees were out on the curb already, waiting for pickup by the garbage man. No way would our tree have been taken out that early on the farm. I still follow the old custom of putting my tree up late and keeping it up until my birthday, which is on Jan. 13, which is what Mother always did.

I think it is rather unique that since we are living in town, we can always go to our farm and cut a tree from the same woods where we always got our trees when we lived there. We have been able to do this for many years, and we all took advantage of this. Even Esther, who lives in St. Louis, came up for Thanksgiving one year and cut a tree out there and took it back to St. Louis. Our farm was planted into a tree farm after we left there.

This year, however, I succumbed to an artificial tree for the first time. Since we have had an unusually cold winter, with lots of snow, it was just too hard for an old lady like me to tramp around in the woods looking for a tree! That does not mean, however, that I will never have a live tree again!

We had a very nice Christmas this year just the same. My family came home for Christmas on the Friday before New Year, and were home Saturday and Sunday. All had to leave again on Monday morning to get back to their respective places, -one to Ft. Wayne, Indiana, and the other to Menomonie, Wisconsin, after taking Chris back to the U. of M. in Minneapolis, where his school started the following morning. There were 7 extra people in my home which made for much extra cooking, but the reward of having them all here was well worth it.

My grandson, Scott, age 10 at the time, had come from Ft. Wayne, Indiana to spend his Christmas vacation with me. He had his first longer airplane trip from Detroit to Mosinee, -alone, and was very proud and happy about that. He helped me with all the Christmas preparations. Among other things, we baked cut out cookies, frosted and decorated them, and got the house ready for the coming of the rest of the family. We also made peanut candy with dark chocolate! Needless to say, I was happy to have him here for 10 days since I am alone otherwise.

Now all that remains to be done is to put the house back in order and resume my daily pattern of living. I will spend more time at my computer, because "Santa" brought me a COLOR PRINTER. So I can continue to make more cards, write letters, and write more stories for my book "The Story of My Life", which I will continue to expand as time goes on.