Load limit

Okay so now our Christmas tree is in a bucket of water in our living room. All day Saturday and Sunday we opened what seemed like a moving van of Rubbermaid storage boxes full of every ornament that we have inherited, bought, made or been given over the past forty years. Some brought back memories of school Christmas ornament projects. That is when kids were allowed to mention Christmas in school.

Other ornaments have hung on our tree ever since I was a kid. Remember the bubble lights from the fifties? We look at them each year, but they are now a bigger fire hazard than candles, so we leave them in the box. We have acorns that look like Santa and clothes pins that look like airplanes. One year we even melted plastic wine glasses in our oven and watched them morph into unpredictable shapes and hung them on the tree.

So how many ornaments can a Christmas tree branch hold? I think you measure it in years and in memories. Somehow the branches, like us, bear the load, no matter how much we make them carry. We just keep watering the tree to give it strength, then sit back and watch our memories glitter in the lights. New Year’s Day, we’ll take it down, repack the ornaments, and haul the boxes back to the attic until next Christmas, along with a few more ornaments that we picked up along the way this year, to add to the memories next year.