Ghost of Christmas Past!

One December many years ago…

My wife and daughter and I struggled through the snow to buy a Christmas tree…

The tree was big…

Our house was small…

but we were determined to make a place for the tree…

Some furniture went into the guest room…

Some went to the basement…

Who cared if there weren’t many chairs left in the family room?

Guests could sit on the floor!

We loved that tree.  We left it up as long as we could.

But finally it had to come down.

That’s when the problems began…

The Christmas tree had dried considerably since we brought it in.

The branches were no longer flexible.

It wouldn’t fit through any door.

Finally we devised a plan…

My wife took one end, I took the other, our five year old daughter shouted directions and we forced the tree through the wide patio door…

Success!  Or so we thought…

Every time we touched the tree, every time we  moved it, a shower of needles fell on the carpet.

The word ”shower” may seem benign to you…

Maybe I should say the Christmas tree left “mountains” of needles on the floor…

We tried using the vacuum cleaner…

It clogged.

My daughter ran for a broom.

She swept with all of her five-year-old might…

We now had a thinner coating of needles over a larger area.

Somebody brought in a yard rake…

We raked and picked up by hand and laughed until the job was done.

Several months later, I was vacuuming the family room and moved a sofa away from the wall…

There in a corner stood a perfectly undisturbed pile of very brown Christmas tree needles.

A ghost of Christmas past…

Once Christmas comes, it never leaves our house…

Dear God, make the same true of our hearts…

“I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year…”
Scrooge (Dickens, A Christmas Carol)

Let us live every day in the light of  the miracle of Christmas…

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Isaiah 9:6