Beauty Redefined

I remember the first year I talked my mom into letting me be in charge of decorating the tree.  It was in college.  I went shopping and bought coordinating ornaments, cottony fake snow, and ribbons to stream down and around the tree.  It was so fun.  Every year after, I tried to think of ways to make the tree more beautiful...getting the lights in just the right places and ornaments scattered just-so around the tree.

Well, here's our tree this year.  My eye is quickly drawn to the ornaments clumped around the bottom which get increasingly sparser toward the top.  And yet, this is the most beautiful tree I've ever seen.  Ornaments keep getting taken off by little hands and put in new places.  (I won't lie.  When I'm the replacer, they get put in an empty spot toward the top, though!)  I think it took all of 5 minutes to decorate the tree this year.  Elissa, Ethan, and McKinley seemed to think they were the expert decorators -- running to the tree, attaching an ornament, and racing back for another one.

My favorite part, though, was the quick glimpse I got of each ornament as it came out of its tissue paper where it was stored last year.  Jason and I are not collectors.  If something does not have a clear use around the house, I'm quick to give it away to someone who could use it.  This has led to a very simplistic house with no clutter, and lots of trips to Goodwill over the years.  The one exception to the rule is Christmas ornaments.  Thoughtfully chosen on vacations, we love the idea of getting to pull them out once a year and enjoy the memories that came with each.  Grandma JoJo has added to our collection the past few years, getting each child an ornament.  The kids quickly caught on that some ornaments were theirs and this added to their anticipation for "next" and "more" ornaments to be unveiled.

As the popular poem about children's fingerprints all over the house reminds me, the difference between a mess and artwork is the perspective of the beholder.  I know that some day when it's back to just me & Jason pulling the ornaments out of the boxes and placing each one just-so on the tree, I'm going to long for the Christmas trees of years past that brought me smiles with each glimpse of their uneven placement.  So maybe the next ornament that gets plucked off, I'll replace amongst the beautifully crowded artwork at the bottom of the tree.