Christmas has always been an important holiday to my wife Margaret and me. Never did we think, that after so many years of being ensconced in the same house where year after year we decorated our tree in the same living room in the same corner with the same decorations, that we would be moving the week before Christmas. We wanted to uphold the tradition of having a tree but hadn’t even half unpacked.
However, inveterate holiday revelers that we are, we committed to having a traditional Christmas Eve family celebration with a decorated tree as always no matter what. Last week, as the movers were unloading boxes from their truck, I spotted that battered six-foot-long oblong box that I’ve re-taped for years and retrieved it before it was transported to storage.
So here we are with all our linens still packed in boxes in the front hall and our pots and pans in similar straits on the kitchen floor, but the very first item to be released from the bounds of its cardboard restraints is that faker-than-fake greenery that somehow springs to life every year with the help of sparkling lights and handmade ornaments.
I dragged the box to the Palladian-like window at the end of our fifth-story great room and plopped it down. Like a 10-year-old child eager to open his first gift, I ripped open the box and pulled out the stand with its spindly legs, which I’m always convinced will never hold the tree steadily enough. Then came the bottom bulkier section of greenery, then the diminished third section, followed by the slimmer second portion and finally the top that brings the tree to a point.
I fluffed out the branches, plugged in the lights and, naturally, another string of them had died during the hot summer months. Margaret supplied another three sets of 100 each to fill in the dead spaces but even one of those didn’t work.
A day later and after another exchange, the tree is fully bright once again as I tangle the new lights with the old, then together we start the yearly ritual of unwrapping the handmade ornaments made from Styrofoam balls covered with fancy ribbons, beads, pearls, rhinestones, feathers, buttons and all kinds of ingenious materials we gathered from Manhattan’s hat district.
To read the rest of this story, click here. Bill Primavera is a Realtor® associated with William Raveis Real Estate and Founder of Primavera Public Relations, Inc., the longest running public relations agency in Westchester (www.PrimaveraPR.com), specializing in lifestyles, real estate and development. His real estate site is: www.PrimaveraRealEstate.comand his blog is: www.TheHomeGuru.com. To engage the services of Bill Primavera and his team to market your home for sale, call 914-522-2076.
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