Having two exchange students living under my roof is always a challenge. There are constant questions that I must give explanations to. Foods, culture, styles of worship, and what things mean. It’s a learning process for everyone. This past weekend was a good learning experience about Christmas in the USA.
Here we are, hot off the Halloween night of Tricks and Treats, going full speed ahead into Christmas like a runaway train on a slippery down hill slope. They want to know about Thanksgiving but its Christmas that is at the top of the list now. I took them to the different Christmas open houses in town and they were amazed at the Christmas trees. I have not given the themed trees much thought. In a past job I was the Visual Merchandising Manager for McRaes if you can remember that incarnation of Belk’s. The last year I worked there I decorated 72 Christmas trees for the Pre-Christmas Harvest Sale. I worked for weeks on those trees, wrapping the branches with hundreds of strands of lights and then coming up with a myriad of themes for the trees.
After that particular year, I would get my tree up and get the lights on it and that was about it. I could not bring myself to put another ornament on a tree. Thankfully I married a man that would decorate the tree and I would sit back and direct. As my children got older they would put the ornaments on the tree. When they were little it was very heavily decorated on the lower half of the tree until they grew taller.
A few years ago I finally found a color scheme I liked and once the tree was decorated I left it like that and put the tree on the corner or the living room behind a screen and left it up; for three years. All I had to do at Christmas was uncover it and plug it in. Then this past spring, my darling daughters undecorated my tree.
So what does this have to do with Christmas Open House and my exchange students? Well they saw all of the beautiful trees and the multitude of decorations and color schemes and themes and they were asking questions about it. Anna was looking at one tree and it had ornaments shaped like candy on it and little red shoe ornaments. She asked “what does a red high heel have to do with Christmas?” Amjaad was fascinated by the pink trees and white trees and gold trees. Both girls said back in their home countries they use live green trees. And they don’t do themes like we do. Anna said she mother might look at one of our trees with all of the decorations and ribbons and sprays and ask ‘Where is the tree?”
They came home and decided to try their hand at decorating my tree. It has a lot of lights on it already so all they have to do is start looking through all of my ornaments and deciding how they want to do it. They are really looking forward to helping Scott as he starts putting up our Christmas Light Display for this year.
We Americans just don’t realize that no one does Christmas like we do. We are a bit over the top in our country with the blending of the secular Christmas and Religious Christmas. Bright, sometimes gaudy Christmas displays sit along side the simple Christmas manager scenes. “Holly Jolly Christmas” and “Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer”are “Rockin a Round the Christmas Tree” right up until “Silent Night” turns into “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear” and “What Child is This” is born in “O Little Town of Bethlehem”.
Yes we do start earlier and earlier each year it seems. That is the secular part of it along with the stress of getting presents that eats away at the pocketbook. The Christian part of Christmas is still the same here as it is in Bethlehem, where Amjaad is from and the place of Jesus birth, and in Anna’s home country of Armenia which is the oldest Christian country. You may see Christmas Trees decorated with fruit or butterflies, or flamingos or red shoes or classic round ornaments. The trees may be traditional green or not so tradition lime green or pink or purple or white or gold. But the theme is still the celebration of the birth of The Christ
