Plum Pudding Day

Every December, my husband makes authentic British plum puddings to send to two of my cousins and one of his friends in New York. Yesterday, he mixed up the thick, fruit-filled batter, and today he steamed the puddings. All day long, the metal canisters were cooking in the big pot, and the entire first floor of the house smelled like a kitchen in Victorian London. (I have a good imagination for such things.)

As I type, three of the puddings are wrapped up in red cellophane and boxed up in Priority Mail packages, ready for their trip to NY. There is also a plum pudding wrapped up and ready for us to enjoy on Christmas Day. Every year, we say that this batch of plum pudding is the best ever, and that's exactly what we said when we tasted a bit of today's pudding.

We usually don't start on the plum puddings till after the big tree is decorated. However... the live Christmas tree is in the dining room and standing in water, naked from bottom to top, without one light or ornament on it. Tomorrow will be the day for that..... and I am determined that it will be finished, every last branch lighted and decorated, before my head hits the pillow tomorrow night.

And then my husband and I will look at the tree and say that this year's tree is positively the most beautiful tree ever. And it will be, because how can any Christmas tree not be beautiful?

I can still picture a very small Christmas tree in my tiny NY apartment years ago... a bit crooked and with bare spots here and there, but it was beautiful to me. I bought it just before Christmas Eve, one of the last trees left on the tree lot, and I carried it up the stairs to my three-room apartment.  I decorated it with hand-made and blown-glass ornaments, with a gold star and a silver moon taking center stage on the front of that sweet little tree. Most of those old ornaments have been broken along the years, but I still have the gold star and silver moon.

Every Christmas since 1993, I place the star and the moon on a special branch on our floor-to-ceiling Texas trees, and I remember that so-small and somewhat crooked tree in my little NY apartment,

How can any Christmas tree not be beautiful?  They're not only filled with ornaments, but decorated with memories.