Getting ready for Christmas in our home started right after Thanksgiving. Not Halloween, not Labor Day - Thanksgiving! The entire decorating process was done in one day shortly after Thanksgiving and went like this....

My mother would drag boxes up from the basement. Boxes and boxes of ornaments and other decorations. These boxes were antiques themselves. I swear they were 50 years old! The newspapers that some of the ornaments were wrapped in made for some very interesting reading as the years went by.

So all these boxes, dusty, damp, dirty, ripped, torn and taped and retaped until we had to cut through 1/2 inch of guey glue that had melted in the summer heat and then gotten cold in the winters. DISGUSTING boxes!!! But when we opened them all that was forgotten. Those mangy boxes were filled with treasures! Beautiful golden haired angels (aka-hair made from gold brillo pads), dazzling ornaments made of the world's finest jewels (aka-colored glass push pins on stryofoam forms), and music snow globes with fairy tale figures inside. These were the treasures of my child-hood Christmas's.

We had two Christmas Trees in our house. One in the family room that the kids decorated and a small tabletop one in the living room that ONLY my mother decorated. Hers was boring to us kids. OURS, on the other hand had candy canes on it. We had tinsel that sparkled in the light and all the ornaments we had made through the years as school art projects. Most of these had our pictures on them - mostly hidden beneath layers of Elmer's glue to make sure that they stayed on. My favorite ones were a set of little plastice gazebo looking things that had tin foil whirlies near a hole in the bottom and if you placed them just right near a lightbulb the heat would soon make them start to twirl around. Those were cool. I think I still have one in my Christmas Ornament collection.

Stringing the lights was a huge production. After untangling 6-7 cords, you had to make sure that no two adjacent bulbs were the same color. There was an art to this and we had a few arguments over bulb placement when getting down to the last few. The ONE bulb color that was never in question, though, was the one that went through the hole in the star. That was ALWAYS blue. This star is still in my family - my oldest brother has it. It is 65 years old and made of tin foil. TIN FOIL!!! It's been repaired with patches, but is still a treasure. I don't think I could keep a piece of tin foil anything "alive" for 65 years!! My mother was good at that, maybe it was a depression thing when you never threw things away - not like today's disposable world.

Anyway, the lights are ready for Dad to make his contribution to the tree decoration process. Once those were up it was time to get busy and decorate. It seemed like a race to see who could put them most ornaments up and who could get their favorites in the front. The front was, of course, prime real estate. Any ornaments on that side wae sure to attract the most attention and if one of those just happened to be the one you had made in school that year, well compliments on artistic talent were always welcome!

The tinsel went on last, but not too much!! For some reason my mother wasn't too fond of the tinsel. Maybe it was because the cats ate it....... While the tinsel was going up, the hot chocolate was being prepared. (REAL hot chocolate!) As soon as we all had a cup, the regular light were turned off, the Christmas music was put on the record player and the tree was plugged in. The Christmas season was here!

All that was left was to spend evenings watching Christmas Specials on TV, shopping, cooking, shopping, planning, giggling over surprises, writing/sending out this years cards and hanging the ones received from family and friends, more shopping, secrets, making taffy or fudge and LOTS of cookies and , of course, Shopping.

It's Christmas Eve and everything is as ready as it's going to get. Decorations have been finalized, which includes the constant replacing of burned out blubs adding extra ornaments to "the bare spot" and getting rid of the accidently broken ornament pieces! It's time to hang the stockings. Now, in THOSE days we didn't have the gigantic red store bought stocking of today. Nope, we used our very own socks. It was kind of a bummer when you're very little because you look at your very small little white sock and then up the line to your big brothers huge one. I do remember when I finally wised up and hung up a knee sock. I was very proud of myself that year for outwitting Santa Clause. He was going to have to dig pretty deep to fill that one! Since we didn't have a fireplace THAT caused a whole different set of "Santa explaining problems), we hung our stocking on the stairs. Oldest at the tio all the way down to the youngest at the bottom. I was number eight so I never really had to reach very high up. Good thing too as I turned out to be quite short!

So now it's time to party! Some years we would have relatives over and some not, but there was always a big dinner, laughter and last minute secrets - dashes to my parents bedroom to wrap one more gift to put under the tree. After dinner and the clean-up we opened gifts. For those of you with small families you have no idea of this part. By the time my father was finished passing out the gifts the family room was literally knee deep in wrapping paper, ribbons and tissue paper. Naturally, as children, this was what we had been waiting for this whole long month - and this was just "the stuff" from our parents!! Santa would be there later on. What a bonanza!! I can still picture all that paper strewn over the floor and everyone ooohing and ahhing over what they received. Chrstmas music was always playing in the background, but the noise level of all the excitement usually drowned it out. Everything had to be tried on or tested or goggled about. When my parents would open up another tie or hankie or piece of ten cent jewelry, the giver would always be gifted with a smile, a hug, and a wonderful "It's just waht I wanted"! We were super shoppers in those days. We NEVER seemed to fail to get Mom or Dad EXACTLY what they wanted! Since I now have my own children, I know what they were thinking inside, but back then we were Kings and Queens of the "I know what Mom and Dad want this year" shopping network.

I don't remember much of any cleanup, so I'm sure it was my mother who picjup up all that wrapping paper. Besides, it was time to go to bed and wait for Santa. The older kids went off to midnight Mass, while the younger ones dreamed of sugar plums and reindeer.

These guys have been around for a bit. Jphn McDermott is my favorite but together they make great music.  THE IRISH TENORS: Home for Christmas. I hope that you enjoy them as much as I do. John has his own album of Christmas music out as well, but it's hard to find! Enjoy.