It's the holiday season! The best time of year! Time to decorate the tree, bake cookies, wrap up all the gifts for our loved ones. It truly is the most magical time of year for me.
I love all of our festive family traditions for Christmas, but most of all I love sharing them with my family.
One of our family traditions is collecting Christmas ornaments. I've been collecting them since before we were married and set up our first Christmas tree, 35 years ago. We have antique ornaments, handmade crafty ornaments, ornaments from our travels and of course Disney ornaments.
I usually have three Christmas trees each year. One main tree in the living room, a small tree in the den with miniature Disney ornaments on it and a big spruce tree outside way in the back yard for the animals, we call that one the Snow White tree.
Our traditional living room tree has gone retro this year. I'd take a picture of it but it's still a work in progress. After 35 years of little white lights, we have added a few old fashioned C7's with real antique reflectors and bubble lights. Not a lot but enough add some color. It's quite a change after all these.
There are many Disney ornaments on it. Each trip I take to Disney I bring back an ornament representing a special occasion that happened that year. There is one for our purchase of Disney vacation Club (DVC) in 1997, one for DS, Peter's citizenship I bought on the cruise to celebrate, and the list goes on and on.
All representing milestones of magic in our family.
Each one has a special story attached to it, but one that caught my eye today was from dear son's early childhood. When he was little, I was always looking for a way to encourage reading and to prolong the magic of Christmas morning.
We usually unwrap presents first and stockings last. I decided to leave a little treasure map in his stocking which if he could decipher the clues, would lead him to a gift. He loved reading and mysteries, so when he discovered it in his stocking off he went around the house following each clue to the next spot. I forget all the clues. I think they were clever and fun and involved Christmas and the story of Christmas. Hmm, well maybe not that memorable since I can't recall them now. I do remember the last clue was to find the second star to the right.
After hunting around looking for stars he looked up. Way up high on the Christmas tree were two stars. The first was a twinkling star ornament and the second was a star ornament that opened like a box with Mickey on it.
Inside the box were Disney park tickets. He knew the minute he opened the box what they were and what they meant. It was a magical moment!
We had made the reservations, bought the tickets and planned our trip for February, staying at The Yacht Club all as a surprise. What a great trip it was!
The little star box is still hung on the tree each Christmas.
Do you have a Disney holiday tradition?
