Cutting Down a Christmas Tree

In the photo above, I was one and a half years old. My sister in the pink jacket was nearly seven years old. It was ten days before Christmas and my family had gone to get our Christmas tree. My family has the tradition of cutting down our own tree every year so we went to Pheasant Ridge Farms, a local pine tree farm. I had so many layers on that I could barely bend my arms. I could not lower them below 45 degrees as I waddled around in my snow pants. It was so tiring to waddle in my thick snow pants that I had to get help walking between the rows of trees.  At the time, the Christmas tree we ended up cutting down seemed to tower over me. When we eventually took the tree home my family made sure to put all the fragile ornaments on the upper half of the tree out of my reach. I would walk by the tree and knock off any ornaments within my reach. The only ornaments that I was allowed to touch were the ones that had no chance of being broken. 

I remember when I was little every Christmas my sister and I would make a Lego train track around the Christmas tree with a little Lego town around it. We would then make a parade for the town of all the Lego cars and minifigures we had. We would then show our parents our Lego parade which was basically just a line of random Legos we had. After making our Lego parade we would usually put our stockings over the fireplace. We would end up arguing about who got which side of the fireplace to hang their stocking. My stubbornness would eventually make my sister concede defeat and let me get the side I wanted. Every year my sister and I would sew a special button onto our stocking. The button represented something we did that year. For example, when I started doing soccer I sewed a soccer ball button onto my stocking. This tradition stopped eventually when I got older. 

This previous Christmas I went to the same Christmas tree farm with my family. Looking back at this picture has made me realize how much Christmas has changed for me. My sister did not come to get a tree with us because she lives on her own in Reno, Nevada. When my sister does come back eventually we never make Lego parades or argue about our stocking placement. My sister and I seem to care less about small Christmas traditions every Christmas. Additionally, we seem to get busier and busier every Christmas and seem to celebrate it even less every year.