When I got married six years ago, my husband and I blended families and with that blending came blending Holidays. Since both our families live in Miami, there was a lot of negotiating/compromising to do. After the first year where we ate two identical Thanksgiving dinners in a row, we said "never again" and rotated Thanksgiving. Christmas has been more of a challenge, since his family "had" Christmas Eve AND Christmas morning and my mother had started a tradition of Christmas Brunch. This configuration resulted in eating a huge Southern breakfast at his Dad's house, and then hitting my Mom's house for another feast (which I could barely look at, much less eat). I suppose it could be said to be a good thing to have TOO many places to go on the holidays, but it often seems stressfull and full of divided loyalties. I realize this doesn't seem like a very cheery Christmas post and I digress from the subject I wanted to cover which is Christmas toppers.
This has been another topic of discussion/compromise in our household. The Christmas skirt rotates from His to Hers each year, so that's easy enough, but the Christmas topper- not so easy. I had an old fashioned muslin angel I handmade many Christmases ago, but it seems too dowdy for the big tree we now have. My topper from my first marriage was a gold star that lit up with tinsel (which is the same type I had growing up) but now it just seems tacky to me. I bought another star from Pottery Barn, which I like, but Zeke doesn't. It looks kind of like a Moravian star, but if the branch at the top isn't completely straight or is too long, it doesn't work. In trying to find a topper to be "ours", we bought a star, that lit up, at Target. We didn't notice it in the store, but when we got it home the filaments changed colors constantly, making it more like a disco star than anything every seen in the East, so we took it back. Zeke's sister-in-law Kathy sent a beautiful, large velvet Santa that may be our favorite, but I had it out for so long trying to write this post (with photos) that it's now sitting on our coffee table and our tree top is bare. All of this barely matters, I realize, but when you talk about traditions and the like you are dealing with: past memories, feelings and emotions and sometimes, beyond reason, it erupts in a fight about the tree topper. If any topper is the perfect one, it may be the star. I saw one advertised in the Sky Mall magazine as a perfect non-denominational topper, for any religion. And so the hunt goes on.
"But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest. Of all who give and receive, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi."
O. Henry
