17 Dec Decorating the Family Christmas Tree with Deborah Main

This is a very spontaneous post…and a very unedited one at that.  It’s not a glamorous holiday post by Deborah Main Designs on how to decorate your tree (sorry to disappoint). No, there are plenty of fabulous interior designers that are doing an all out job with that! (But do please enjoy our decorating “progress” throughout this post.)

No, this is just a simple, every day post by me, Deborah Main, about my regular family life, with all it’s imperfections, and squeezing in decorating our tree amidst school finals, holiday shopping, fashion shows, work deadlines, grocery shopping, and everything else that goes along with every day life. But it’s also a post I felt compelled to write tonight.

This holiday season, I think it’s important to stop just for a minute and think.  I certainly did, and here’s why.

Step #1: Our Christmas tree unadorned, a fresh tree bought in Austin, Texas.

I was inspired today by a few lovely comments on my Facebook about how beautiful our “Au natural” tree looked (as we let it sit yesterday to fall out before we decorated it tonight).

I was so struck by how just one simple photo of a fresh pine tree spoke to people and brought many wonderful comments.

My daughter and husband have the honor of selecting our tree every year and I always have to say “Remember, tall and skinny!” cause it sits smack in the middle of our family room (cause there’s no place else for it) and if the branches are too wide, well, we run into it all the time. They did pick a pretty winner this year!

But one comment about my tree, has particularly stuck with me all day.  A friend I don’t even know very well, but enjoyed meeting a time or two while dancing at The Broken Spoke (an infamous Texas dance hall), inspired this post with a simple statement:

“Beautiful tree! Share progress pics as I, for one, am doing this part of Christmas vicariously through you”.

Now THAT really struck me!  It stopped me in my busy tracks, and got me thinking and remembering.

Step #2, the lights. We seem to have a lot of blue and are missing a few strands. I think we had to toss 3 out because they no longer worked. Can you spot the cat tail peeking out of lower left?

The Thinking Part:  What I’m grateful for. You know as well as I do, that amidst all our hustle and bustle, not everyone is home with a family, or even has a home.  Not everyone has a beautiful tree to decorate either. Some folks are traveling.  Some folks have aging parents. Some people are single and not with relatives at this time. And some don’t even celebrate Christmas.  And, like me, some have had losses during the holidays (my mother died on Dec 23rd, 2002).  So I personally understand that the holidays are not always a happy time.  It can bring back painful and sad memories.  But, it also can be enlightening and full of joy as well. That’s why this comment really resonated with me and is worth repeating:

“Beautiful tree! Share progress pics as I, for one, am doing this part of Christmas vicariously through you”.

I’m very lucky to have a husband, two fabulous children (and even a 3rd, who’s a foreign exchange student/daughter), and a lovely home to have a fresh Christmas tree in the middle of our family room.  You can’t imagine how thankful I am for all this!!  As I didn’t always know it was possible.  And, as any one knows with our fluctuating economy and weather, sometimes our circumstances can change rapidly, like it did for all the families during Austin’s tragic Halloween Flood. 

At Christmastime, I’m always reminded how much it means to have my family and my home….and I am forever humbled by this.

Step #3. Part of our family placing ornaments on our tree (my daughter Qin, who is not extremely overjoyed with Mom snapping a pic, and family friend Ingelise)  while my other half is up in the kitchen helping our foreign exchange student/daughter with a Government study sheet for finals.

The Remembering Part:  Her comment also stuck with me because I remember as a child how important Christmas was to me. Not for the presents (I even got double presents cause my parents were divorced so I had TWO Christmases), but for the “feelings”, the “memories”, the “cherished moments”, the “keepsake ornaments shared from year to year” (and no, I’m not just saying that cause Deborah Main Designs sells collectible ornaments, but please check them out here cause they are rather adorable ).

Step #4: Adding Deborah Main collectible holiday ornaments displayed on our tree for your viewing pleasure.  Available for custom order in any color.

Christmas has special meaning to me, because as a child, like many young children do, I fantasized about what a “perfect” Christmas would look like.  I didn’t know it then, but I was being raised by a single mother, and our Christmas tree, was a tiny, table-top tree on a cedar chest.  I hated it. Then on Christmas day or the day after, I would fly to another state and be with my Dad and his family and we’d have a fake tree and lots of presents.  It was great fun and I have wonderful memories. But while my parents did an astounding job, there was always something inside me that didn’t quite feel like our Christmas was the real thing…..or at least not what I imagined my friends families’ Christmases were like at that time.

In Kingston, New York, in the Hudson Valley, where I primarily grew up, there were three families in my neighborhood that I idolized, and probably are the very reason I have created, with my husband, the home we live in and the large tree we decorate each year.

In fact, my whole family history has a lot to do with why I even make luxury decorative pillows. For me, it’s my personal, artistic expression of creating cherished family heirlooms, which are important to me.

These three families had large houses, many children (one family had 13!), and married parents. I, on the other hand, lived in the downstairs of an old Victorian house with my divorced mother and older brother and my bedroom had glass sliding doors you could see through. I appreciate the Victorian aspect now, but back then it was not the most glamorous or secure. In the early 1960’s, no one really divorced, so I thought I was the only one in the world that had a family like this.  But what I remember most about these families is Christmas, and the HUGE trees they’d have in their living rooms with trains running underneath them and, what looked to me,like a “perfect” family and a “magical” Christmas.

Step #5: This photo is special to me because it captures 3 generations of cherished family heirloom ornaments. From left to right: the very 1st Deborah Main collectible ornament made by my daughter, a handcrafted heart basket made by my mother-in-law, and the one cherished ornament I have from that “table-top” Christmas tree as a child in Kingston, New York, an old Santa Claus.

It’s the Christmas magic I like to think that takes over our hearts, at least mine, at this time of year. Not for all the commercialization of it, but for the simple wonder and quiet moments I spend by the fireplace when everyone’s in bed and I can relish the gratitude I feel when I look at my tree late at night. I stopped decades ago trying to have a perfect family and Christmas.  Thank GOD!!  That was waaay too stressful trying to pull that one off…lol!! So take it from me, don’t even try.  Just enjoy whatever Christmas means to you!

Step #6: The final decorated tree with our cat Zabel (from Austin Pets Alive) who just happened to be in the right spot for this photo op.

So my gift to you this holiday season is our imperfect family and the decorating of our family tree with ornaments collected over the years, from kindergarten to “first” Christmases, to now, Deborah Main pillow ornaments.  Please note in the photos we really do need another set of lights…cause the bottom ones don’t work. And you’ll also notice we don’t have many on top either and we have this tiny, substituted angel…because tonight my husband accidentally dropped our blown glass tree topper (I was very thankful it was not a cherished one, as I do have special glass ornaments from my mother and my mother-in-law that I would be sad if broken).

But you know what, I’d be happy even if we never decorated the tree!!  Because what the Facebook comments reminded me tonight is that Christmas is all about  love….and you don’t need a decorated tree or even heirloom ornaments to have that.

A simple fresh tree with no adornments at all still creates Christmas magic!!

We at Deborah Main Designs thank you for the inspiration and gift you gave us with your comments. We truly appreciate you and wish you a blessed and magical holiday season! XO PG