Christmas · My Thoughts

When Do You Put Up Your Christmas Tree?

Featured Larada Horner-Miller
Christmas tree

Many families have traditions that dictate when to put up the Christmas tree. Is earlier better? Right after Thanksgiving? How about Christmas Eve? When do you do it?

As a child, we put up our live tree we’d cut down off of our ranch around December 10th. As a family, we hunted for deer in October, walking the canyons and eyeing any possible tree and scoping them out. We always debated the size: Dad, my brother and I always wanted a big one. Mom wanted one to put on the coffee table.

Mom's size Christmas tree
Mom’s Size Christmas Tree. Photo by Oleg Zaicev from Pexels

When we moved into our new home in 1967, my brother and Dad selected the tree. This house had a higher ceiling, so they went for big—REALLY TALL! When they brought it into the house and the top curled over, they had to cut it off! What I remember is the delicious smell of a fresh cut tree!

As an adult, any time I came home for Thanksgiving, we would cut down trees the weekend after Thanksgiving. I love live, fresh trees! So, I decided the earlier I put it up the better! I usually put up my tree the first week of December. That gave me more time to enjoy it and all the decorations.

Photo by Nick Collins from Pexels

For several years I spent Thanksgiving away from home, so I bought live trees off of lots in Albuquerque. It shocked me how dry they were! To my horror, I found out they had been cut down months before. I realized I couldn’t put up that dead tree and be safe for a month, like usual. That forced us to buy an artificial tree!

Then, I returned to putting it up the first week of December and that has been my habit ever since! And yes, we have an artificial tree. I miss the smell of a piñon pine and the fun of cutting down a tree off of our family ranch, but we have decided artificial is the way to go for now.

Our Christmas Tree
Our Christmas Tree 2020

For certain, it’s a personal choice! I love everything about a Christmas tree! Grab a cup of hot chocolate and a cookie. Turn off the lights and turn on your favorite Christmas music. Soak up the warmth of a lit Christmas tree! And make memories!

When do you put yours up? Is yours live or artificial? Why?

~Visit my two blog posts from last week:

Book Cover of Just Another Square Dance Caller

~HAVE YOU ORDERED A PERSONALLY AUTOGRAPHED COPY OF THE FLIPPO BIOGRAPHY FOR A CHRISTMAS PRESENT FOR A LOVED ONE OR YOURSELF?   AVAILABLE NOW! Go to the homepage on my website & pay for it there: https://www.laradasbooks.com

~Here’s Christmas greetings from Flippo & Neeca, featuring his song, “When Its Christmas Time in Texas”: https://youtu.be/mpJCUGffU3A

ALL FOUR E-BOOK FORMATS OF FLIPPO’S BIOGRAPHY AVAILABLE NOW:

~Visit my web site for all the information you need about me & my books:  https://www.laradasbooks.com

~ Visit my Etsy Shop for 25% off individual paperback titles. Good until December 20, 2020. Here’s the coupon link: https://www.etsy.com/shop/LaradasReadingLoft?coupon=25OFFS&IA1220INDIV

Published by Larada Horner-Miller

Larada Horner-Miller is a poet, essayist and accomplished multi-genre author who holds a bachelor’s degree in English, with a minor in Spanish and a master of education degree in Integrating Technology into the Classroom. She is the accomplished author of six award-winning biographies, historical fiction, memoir, and poetry works plus three self-published cookbooks. Her sixth book, Coronavirus Reflections: Bitter or Better?, is available in paperback and four e-book formats. Larada offers the reader the opportunity to look back at 2020 and the global pandemic through her prose and poetry through reading, then reflecting and responding. She addresses all the emotions she felt during this overwhelming time and leads the reader through to a self-access: bitter or better? Her fifth book is the authorized memoir and biography of world-renown square dance caller Marshall “Flip” Flippo. Just Another Square Dance Caller: Authorized Biography of Marshall Flippo is available now in hardback, paperback and four e-book formats. Recently Just Another Square Dance Caller won two awards: Book Excellence Awards Finalist and Silver award for eLit. Book Awards. Another recent book of hers, A Time to Grow Up: A Daughter's Grief Memoir has won many awards including being a 2018 Book Excellence Awards Finalist in the Memoir category at the New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards and a 2018 Independent Press Distinguished Favorites Award in the Memoir category. Horner-Miller has also been a past national presenter at the Women Writing the West Conference and is currently the creator of Memoir Workshops for others who want to share their family’s legacies through words. Larada and her husband, Lin, enjoy being nestled in the mountains above Albuquerque, New Mexico, near the village of Tijeras. When not writing books, this passionate, energetic, and enthusiastic woman loves to spend time kicking up her heels at square dancing gatherings, traveling, knitting, and reading. As co-manager of her family’s southeastern Colorado ranch, she enjoys spending time exploring her family’s historic ranch and reminiscing with her brother and his children about their mom, dad, and granddad.

4 thoughts on “When Do You Put Up Your Christmas Tree?”

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