There she stands at 10 feet tall. She has 1,200 lights and over 1,100 ornaments (at last count) and rising each year. We typically decorate the week of Thanksgiving. It only takes about an hour to put the tree up; but it takes a full day to get it decorated. We actually have three Christmas trees in the house. The other two are much smaller and don’t take near the time. I add between 20-25 ornaments each year. There are still branches without ornaments, so all is good.

A Christmas Tree is nothing without pretty packages being placed underneath. One of the most enjoyable parts of Christmas (other than decorating the tree) is wrapping presents. My father retired disabled from military service after 22 years when I was 9 years old. Mom didn’t work outside the home except during the Christmas season. She took a job as a professional gift wrapper at Hemphill-Wells department store in San Angelo at the corner of Beauregard Avenue and Irving Street (today it’s a li...

I said it. “Christmas Eve Gift”. If I’m the first person to say it, then you are obligated to provide me with a single gift from underneath the Christmas Tree. A gift that you choose of course. Those are the rules. I’m wondering how many of you knew that rule. If not, then you didn’t grow up in my family! I’m not quite sure where the rule came from, but we observed it every year. Most of the time it was my mom that was first. She was a real early bird on Christmas Eve.

Christmas Tree Story #8: Clickety Clack. In 1991, I moved into a house in North Houston. Several weeks passed and I could not understand why I was sleeping so well. It took me a while to figure it out, but the house was located within about... 300 yards of a railroad track.  During the night, trains would pass through...clickety clack, clickety clack, clickety clack. My Nanny and Papaw (my mother's parents) lived on Abe street where the railroad tracks cross the boulevard directly in front ...

Christmas Story #7: Divinity. Divinity, fudge, peanut brittle, English toffee, millionaires, and turtles. I had to have the new Hallmark ornament series, “Season’s Treatings”. It all started many years ago. With our ingredients and a few pots and pans loaded up in the car; Mom, David, and I would head off in the early morning in December every year to Betty & Roy Minor’s house. The goal: make as much candy as you can before midnight! Well, that may not have been the s...