The Detective’s Daughter – Lovely as a Tree

 

Kim in Baltimore organizing birthdays, college graduations, and Christmas!

 

When I was a child I remember watching a holiday show called The House Without a Christmas Tree. I couldn’t imagine such a thing. We had two -sometimes three- trees right in my own house. My family in a neighborhood that’s now referred to as Federal Hill, but back then it was just plain old South Baltimore. Everyone I knew celebrated Christmas and had a tree in their living room that you could see from the street at night when the decorations were lit up.

Our trees were always artificial, but beautiful. My grandparents had a silver one that sparkled as the color wheel turned casting shades of blue, red and green onto the branches. Upstairs, in my parents’ apartment, the tree was a normal green.

The first year I was married my husband took me to a tree farm. We trudged along through the snow with our dog in search of the perfect tree. If you’ve ever seen the Chevy Chase movie Christmas Vacation, you’ll have a good idea of how that all turned out. My husband did bring the saw, but left it in the car!

I believe you can never have too many lights on the tree, and when my children were very small, there were times when lights were all I could manage. The year my son was born our tree was completely bare.

This year my husband and I took a trip to New York City where we had the opportunity to visit Rockerfeller Center. The tree was magnificent! The historic Hotel Edison also had an elegant tree on display in their lobby and we were fortunate to see it on our way in and out of the hotel every day.

This week the tree at my house was put up and adorned with lights. Like my parents before me, I am now decorating an artificial tree for the holidays. Pine or plastic, it’s still magical to me.

As this year comes to a close, so does my time here on the Wicked Authors blog. It has been wonderful sharing my stories with all of you and I have appreciated the many sweet notes and responses I’ve received. Thank you for reading.  I will continue to periodically post The Detective’s Daughter on my Facebook page Kimberly Kurth Gray – Author, if you would like to follow me there.

I wish you all a happy holiday and a healthy, peaceful 2020!

Dear Reader, please share with us your favorite holiday symbol.