Steve, don’t you ever apologize about your mother. I lost my stepfather in 1987, and my mother in 1989. This time of year brings back the good memories but they are mixed with the sad ones. All the songs on the radio are about going home for Christmas. Today I looked out the window at a pileated woodpecker tearing up our star gum tree and thought, You are home for Christmas. That other home has been gone nearly 30 years.

But that doesn’t mean we can’t relive those days in our minds. That’s why I put out those small, old, cheap decorations. So I can remember. I’m glad you are remembering too.

A very happy holiday to you and your family,

Candice

I’m sorry for the line about my mom. It was inappropriate and thoughtless of me.

I felt I was back in time with you traveling the paths of our youth. The Ornaments, the memories, the pictures and the story of you and your husband have raised my spirits and inspired me with Christmas and Angels.

My Mom died on this day at the age of 62 in 1987 after a long illness.

Thanks again for lifting me up.

Steve

I started off taking photos to remember how I arranged things this year. Then I remembered that tie-on angel and sitting in the woods, and the darkness lit by Christmas lights. I had no idea I was writing a love story until I got to the end. That’s the joy of writing.

Hi Caroline! I remember visiting some people who had moved to Virginia from California when I was a kid. They had a deciduous tree, not an evergreen, with cotton batting glued to bare branches and hung with silver and blue balls. I thought it was the strangest thing I’d ever seen and we chalked it up to them being from California. It never occurred to me it didn’t snow there and traditions could be changed! Have a merry one!

Dear Jama: I thought of you last week when I heard Bing Crosby singing “Mele Kalikimaka.” I used to hear this song when I was a kid and always wondered what on earth Christmas was like in Hawaii. Now I know. No difference!

You had the same stores, the same aluminum trees, the same hopes and dreams and little disappointments. I would kill for a vintage aluminum tree, but have to make do with Walmart tinsel trees. I would have thought your mother’s fuchsia theme was beautiful. The sixties brought bright, modern colors to the holiday.

I have a 1956 BH&G Christmas special and I couldn’t do any of the projects in it! I love it that you tried to make that cookie castle, most likely from a woman’s magazine, and that you wanted that pin cushion for yourself. And especially that your mother went back to Ben Franklin to find one for you. These are the memories that keep us warm . . . yeah, we still are kids inside.

Wishing you and Len the very best in 2016 . . . and thanks for taking such good care of my woods. Someday you might catch a glimpse of my ten-year-old self heading for the creek.

This nostalgic post brought back many fond Christmas memories: when my mother first got one of those silver aluminum trees and decorated it with fuchsia bulbs (my brother and I protested, preferring a real tree that had a real smell), the year we hosted the family Christmas party at our house and went shopping for game prizes at Ben Franklin (found an adorable clown pin cushion; you pulled his nose for the tape measure, and I was SO sad when my boy cousin won this prize and broke it, my mom went back to BF to buy me one for myself but they were sold out), and the year I foolishly tried to construct a cookie castle with ice cream cones as turrets (the thin cardboard I used for the walls buckled under the weight).

The thing about getting older — you’re still a kid inside only people can’t tell. Thanks for sharing your special vintage treasures. Wishing you and Frank and Atticus a beautiful Christmas and all the best in 2016!