My Bluebird of Happiness

Most of what makes Christmas so special to everyone is the traditions we have all grown up with or have created for our own families.  Everyone's traditions are different.  It might be singing a certain song on Christmas eve.  It could be a certain order you open gifts.  It might be something common among lots of families, like leaving milk and cookies out for Santa.  Or it might be something personal and unique.  There are lots of different ways to have a tradition.

I have grown up with a few traditions in my family.  One that I really like is how my grandmother would buy each of her grandkids an ornament to attach to our gifts.  She has given me twenty eight ornaments over the years.  Each one hangs on my tree every year.  My mother has carried on the tradition by giving my sons an ornament with their gifts.  Connor has four, Kenny has one.  I started a small tradition after Connor was born of buying him a book each Christmas.  He gets books all through the year and has a bookshelf full of books. But I love to read and I hope that he will too and I liked the idea of giving him a book every year.

I have a special little tradition I do every year that's just for me.  When I was little, I don't remember what age, but I do remember this happening, I would stand and stare at my grandparents Christmas tree, looking at all the ornaments.  There was one ornament that I fell in love with.  It was a little bluebird.  It was wood, painted blue and white with little colored dots.  Every year my Pawpaw would take it down and let me play with it.  Then one year, he told me, my sister, and my cousin we could all pick out an ornament off their tree.  I picked the little bluebird.  Now, every year since I've had my own tree to decorate, it has always been the very first ornament to go on and the very last ornament to come off.  I don't remember how or why that started, but I always do it that way.  It's tradition.

This year my husband said he wanted to start the tradition of getting a live tree every year.  So we got one this year.  We'll see about next year.  My husband is kind of the forgetful type.  We might get to next year and he might rather go back to our old faithful fake tree.  But this year we have a live tree, which is wonderful.  It smells so good, it's a great shape.  I finished putting the ornaments on today, and just like always, the little bluebird was the first one on it.  That tree had no idea what it was destined for as it was sitting outside of Wal-mart in the gardening section.  It didn't know that when we walked up, it would be going home with us, that it would be lucky enough to carry on a special tradition of mine.