SPEAKING OF CHRISTMAS - the first part....

Before I get into my post this morning, I just want to share a few pictures I took of our incredible sunset on Sunday evening.  I just about missed seeing this, as I had the living room drapes closed.  When I opened them, this is what I saw, so I grabbed my camera, headed outside and took some pictures.  The sky changed by the minute, I took over 30 pictures, and every one is different...

We have the most beautiful sunsets here almost every evening, but this one was the best yet!

Now back to my post.....

Well, we weren't really speaking of Christmas last week, were we?  But truth is, my head is already in Christmas mode -as are my hands.  This kind of happens to one, when preparing for a "Christmas " sale.

I am always ready for anything Christmas.  As you already know - it's my time to shine.  I love everything there is about the season.  The Story; The music; The Traditions; The Food; The Emotion; The Decorations; The Memories...

This post comes under The Decorations and The Memories category.

When I think about Christmas as a child, there are a two decorations that immediately come to mind.

The first is the angel that always sat on the top of our tree.  She might have been just a little plastic angel lit from within by a yellow Christmas tree bulb, but to me she was Magic!  You see our angel held a clear plastic wand... and when she was new, the yellow light from the bulb inside her shone through the wand to the end, making the tip of the wand look like it was gold.  She also had hair, and a gold metal crown on her head.  She was magic - and I loved her.

She was a giveaway customer gift at the Esso filling station that my oldest brother worked at in the late 1950's early 60's.   He brought home two - one for our tree, and the other one sat beside my bed on a table every night through Christmas.

When my brother moved away from home, he took the second angel with him, the other stayed for our tree at home.

I inherited her when my Dad sold our family home, and every Christmas for the past 30 some years, she has sat on the top of our Christmas tree.  She still has her hair, and her gold metal crown.  Her wand is there too, but every year I have to reattach it to her body, and I have noticed that the yellow light from the Christmas bulb inside her doesn't quite make it to the tip of her wand as it used to - but I still love her best of all.

The other decoration firmly planted in my memory is a white church that sat under the tree.  It too was made of plastic, and I thought the front doors opened, but that might have been the wishful thinking of a child reciting a learned Sunday school rhyme...  "Here's the church, here's the steeple, open the doors and see all the people."  Remember that one?

The thing is, I have scoured every Christmas picture of those early years, and not one shows the white church under the tree.  But I know it was there, because I used to lay on my belly and play with it.

This ornament is indeed just a memory, if it did exist - it is long gone.

Part 2 tomorrow.....