The Mouse That's Missing from My Christmas Tree

When it comes to Christmas, I am all about tradition, so my Christmas tree has looked the same for many years now, decorated with ornaments I have collected for years.

The ornaments included the little red Santa from the small tabletop tree I had in my first apartment.  The drummer boy we purchased the first year we got a ‘real’ tree, who sat lonely in the middle of the big tree because we didn’t have many ornaments to accompany him.  It became a tradition to begin the decorating with the little drummer boy as we played Emily Lou Harris’s rendition of that song.

The tree also included the hand-made ornaments from a few years later.  The Disney ornaments I painted with my oldest daughter when she was two years old.

I also collected ornaments when we traveled and have one from each trip representing countries all over the world, even from places like Nepal and China, where you might not expect to find a lot of Christmas ornaments.

And then there was the little mouse that was given to my youngest daughter when she was three because she had an imaginary friend who was a mouse.  Every year when I decorated our tree I remembered again all of the times I had to lift that imaginary mouse into the car as we were getting ready to go someplace.

So decorating our tree each year gave me a chance to revisit those events in my life.  Very rewarding, all warm and fuzzy.  But the thing about it was, the tree was never very attractive.  That conglomeration of ornaments never fit together quite right.

Through the years, I always admired some of my friends’ trees that looked so beautifully decorated, with everything matching and orderly and splendid looking.  I had especially admired a solid white tree at a friend’s house with all white ornaments, many hand made.  It was very splendid.  And I always wanted one.

So this year I got a white tree with matching ornaments and left all of the memories in storage.  I did pull them out and look through them.  The memories are still there.

I Know Where the Elves Live

Source: Jack Flanagan, Flickr, https://farm9.staticflickr.com

No really.  And it’s not the North Pole—at least not exclusively.  I saw them last year.

Not far from my home here in northern Tennessee there’s another home high on a hill.  I’ve been there before for political functions.  It’s quite an elaborate spread.  At the foot of the hill there’s another house (maybe a caretaker’s house?), a rather nice, ancient two-story brick house.

Leading in to this whole estate is a wonderful wooden covered bridge over a small stream.  Every year at Christmas the wooden bridge is lined with Christmas lights of all sorts—angels, reindeer, Santas, snowmen, and lights, lights galore, all glowing in the dark.

One year my two oldest granddaughters were visiting for the weekend to make a gingerbread house.  One night we drove them down to see the lights.  We went over the wooden bridge and they oohed and ahhed at the lights.  We stopped to turn around just in front of the house at the bottom of the hill.  In the upstairs window we could see a person sitting in front of the window.  Just the shadowy outline.  Without any prompting one of the granddaughters whispered, “I think that’s one of Santa’s elves.”  The other agreed it had to be.

I know where they live now, and if you come here some December night you might be able to see them.