Oh, Christmas Tree

Oh, my. Christmas blew up in my house. And the debris has yet to be fully surveyed, much less cleared. Christmas decorating used to be a fairly simple affair. Don showed Katie photos last night of the tree we shared for Christmas the first year of our marriage. One of us loved the small tabletop model purchased on clearance at a discount store, and found it a charming and festive addition. The other (who shall remain nameless except for the spelling of "D-o-n") not so much. He and Katie thought that wonderful little tree was pitiful. While that tree still has fond memories for me, it is not the sort of Christmas Tree about which I obsess.
The Year of the Teeny Tabletop Tree was also the year that I received my first piece of Spode Christmas Tree china. And so the seeds planted in childhood by an auntie who lived for a time in jolly, olde England where she began a collection of Christmas china began to sprout. Into the beanstalk of last Christmas when I discovered that *GASP!!!* my china had been outsourced to no longer be "Made in England". Wrong-o-moosebreath! So we found a temporary source, and then later my auntie sent me a treasure trove from her own collection. My mother and my mother-in-law were both greatly relieved to hear that the china set they and others had been thoughtfully building one Christmas gift at a time would feature enough dinner plates for our whole clan. (We are women who actually concern ourselves with this sort of thing. My daughters are being trained to a combination of concern over the dinnerware matching, and an understanding that paper plates do not have to be washed so long as one is okay with killing the planet. The girls are still a little confused, but they will get it all sorted out before they are responsible for such things.) Yesterday I assembled all of the booty amassed during last year's frenzy to find every possible piece of "Made in England" Christmas Tree china available within the state.

And then, I just sat in the dining room with the most foolish of smiles. And goggled. And giggled. And perhaps a bit too reverently held up pieces of china for my long-suffering spouse to admire. It was an occasion of such magnitude that the thirteen year old boy came into the room and managed a comment about all that Christmas China. Hee.