Happy belated Valentines 2024

[Murfreesboro]

Didn't get around to it yesterday, but I hope all who celebrate had a nice Valentine's Day. Ours was sort of a non-event. I did make it to church for Ash Weds. This afternoon I intend to make the chocolate chess pie I didn't make yesterday.

I guess it's officially time for me to retire the sweet Santa who's been hanging on my kitchen door. He has a pink heart on his chest, so I leave him up for Valentine's Day.

[Andybev01]

You can give up Santa for lent.

[Murfreesboro]

Lol. Andy, that cracked me up.

Maybe I should give up my Christmas tree for Lent, too. We still have it up with just the lights on it. I'd like to take it down on March 1, but my husband wants to wait for the equinox.

[Andybev01]

The fact that the two of you don't think it's remotely unusual to have your Christmas tree up so far into the new year is utterly charming.

[Murfreesboro]

Thanks. I'd leave it up all year, except then I know I'd become blind to it.

[Andybev01]

Yeah, I would too.

Besides, I enjoy the ritual of going through my tubs and setting up decorations each season.

[Murfreesboro]

Yes, I like to celebrate each season as it comes.

When I was a child, maybe 9, I actually did (was allowed) to keep a Christmas tree up until mid June. The tree was about 5 feet tall and was in my bedroom. It was a real tree, so it dried out to become very prickly. My mother forbade me to turn the lights on it after a few weeks because it was a fire hazard. She kept telling me to take it down, but I didn't because, by that time, the needles pricked my fingers. Ultimately she took it down herself before we went on vacation.

Anyway, that experience taught me that, if you leave a tree up too long, it's no longer special to you. Pulling out the decorations the following Christmas wasn't very exciting, because I'd seen them every day for the first six months of the year. Right now, even though my artificial tree is still up and lit, the decorations came down on Jan 7. And the tree itself will come down in March. We just aren't agreed on which day.

We have daffodils up in our yard now. It already feels a little late for Christmas trees.

[Andybev01]

'The children played on in the courtyard. The youngest child wore on his breast the gold star that had topped the tree on its happiest night of all. But that was no more, and the tree was no more, and there's no more to my story. No more, nothing more. All stories come to an end.'

[Murfreesboro]

Well, that's forlorn!

I used to insist on a natural tree. I thought artificial ones were a violation of the Christmas spirit, even though it was always poignant to have to discard the real ones. But the first Christmas we were married, my new husband would not permit me to buy a tree when they went on sale in November. He said it was too early. When he finally gave me the go-ahead, there were no natural trees to be had (this was on a military base in Texas). We had to buy an artificial one, and, boy, was I angry! However, we kept that tree for years, and even though we sometimes did have real ones, there were plenty of Christmases when our finances wouldn't permit that luxury, so it was the artificial one or nothing.

I finally changed my thinking about the artficial tree when my first son was 5. We were driving through the neighborhood in late December and saw a tree with its tinsel discarded in the gutter. My son asked me, "Will we throw away our tree?" When I told him no, because ours was artificial, he said, "Good." It was the first time I'd thought about it that way. I'd thought I wasn't doing my child right, making him have a fake tree, but he was sentimental enough to want to keep his tree. So as soon as I could, I bought a nicer artificial tree, and that's what we've had ever since.

[Andybev01]

That's from Hans Christian Andersen's 'The Fir Tree'.

I think that the prolonged Nordic winters taint their outlook just a tad.

Believe it or not I was born with an almost nonexistent sense of smell so the scent of Christmas trees (and pretty much everything else) is lost on me.

I prefer artificial trees for their tidyness and safety.

[Murfreesboro]

Ah, I think I've read that, but many years ago, childhood, maybe.

If your sense of smell is weak, does it affect your enjoyment of food?

That's the main thing I miss about a real Christmas tree. Sometimes I'll even buy a plug-in to use behind the artificial tree so I can pretend I've got a real one.

[Andybev01]

Most of what we smell is actually triggered by the palet, so it only hinders me when I cook.

I taste food a lot while I'm cooking.

[Murfreesboro]

Well, that's good.

One of my grandmothers had lot of sinus issues, and she never enjoyed cooking or even food. I've always wondered if her sense of smell was defective.

[Andybev01]

Sounds possible, it never stopped me from all aspects of food.

I'm the youngest of 11 and one of my sisters shares this trait.

[Murfreesboro]

Wow, eleven! I knew you had several, but that's getting into 19th century-size families.

I went to a family reunion ten or eleven years ago for a branch of my family that traces itself back to the American Revolution and earlier. These folks are genealogists out of this world. One lady took me into her study, which was floor to ceiling bookshelves of white, spiral bound notebooks. She pulled one of them out and showed me a daguerreotype (sp?) of my direct ancestor. This guy was the youngest son of the Revolutionary War dude. Turns out, Revolutionary War guy had fifteen kids, and this son was #15. If he and his wife had thought 14 were enough, neither I, my immediate family, nor a whole slew of my cousins and their families, etc, would be here. Weird thought.