I’m a dictator when it comes to decorating our Christmas tree. Blame my mother.
As free-wheeling and independent as she was in most aspects of her life, Joanie had rules and regulations aplenty this time of year. The most rigid of all was this edict: big ornaments on the bottom of the tree, smaller ones at the top.
Like many kids, if my parents said something had to be this way, I believed and did the opposite. I guess I heard The Ornament Rule invoked so many times, I came to believe it.
When my family decorated our tree recently, I kept repeating the rule to our little boy Atticus. He looked at me quizzically and tried to stray but eventually got with the program.
His mom, Suzame, who possesses the family’s design eye, tried to persuade him otherwise but to no avail. The next day, Atticus told a visitor with stern authority, “Put the big ones at the bottom!”
Thus a tradition, irrational as it may be, was passed to yet another generation. And my mother lives on in small but irrepressible ways.
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While you sleep, I will move the big ornaments from the bottom to the top. And I will quietly undermine your efforts to turn our sweet boy into a holiday dictator.
I’m afraid I was raised the same way and said out loud to my 14 year old son “Big ornaments on the bottom”
My husband laughed at the rule. My son with the visual eye didn’t say much and took my advice.
You are not alone!
Oh, my God! That is so me!
Jo-Ann
Thinking of tradition, either keeping or changing, we’re going to my daughters for Christmas, gotta see our granddaughter. They live in a townhouse, just got a new puppy 7 months ago, a mastiff now 100lbs. So they have gone with a traditional lighted Palm Tree. Big ornaments go on top.