Christmas will soon be here. If all the advertising didn’t make me aware of the season, the weather would. We had a huge dump of snow this week and then frigid temperatures. In fact, yesterday Alberta was the coldest place in the world. Not a record I’m particularly pleased about. I finally decided I couldn’t hibernate until the warm weather returned and went to town. And laughed at the crazy amount of snow piled up everywhere.

Enough about the snow. Suffice it to say it puts one in a Christmassy mood. (Also puts me in the mood to travel to a warmer place.)

Many have already put up their Christmas trees. Did you know it was Queen Victoria’s German-born husband Prince Albert who first introduced Christmas trees to England. In 1841 he put one up in Windsor Palace. The custom soon caught on.

I remember one year, as a child, there was a shortage of Christmas trees in our little town. My mother improvised by creating one out of clothes hangers and green crepe paper. I’m sure it was very nice but I missed the real thing.

Later, while I lived in a dorm with a bunch of girls (that was quite an experience) our floor decorated our tree with handmade, old-fashioned decorations. We made sleighs, bell shapes and tree shapes from old cards and hung them with colored yarn or ribbon keeping mostly to red and green. It was very becoming. In fact, we won a prize for it. Likely the prize was food as we never got enough to eat on our food allowance.

Since marriage, our trees have gone through a number of developments. Once we moved to this area where there are trees in abundance, we cut down our own for a few years. But once the kids all left home that wasn’t so much fun anymore. So I took a lesson from a friend. I bought an artificial tree and decorated it. Each year I cover it with a large plastic bag and store it in a corner of the basement. All I have to do is bring it up and park it in a corner and I’m done.

It’s not that I’m lazy. I prefer to think of it as efficient. The truth is, I can think of so many other things I prefer to spend time at–reading, writing, baking, visiting, etc.

Are you the sort who loves to decorate? Or does your preference for Christmas activities go a different direction? What is your favorite part of the activities?