Thursday, November 29, 2007

Our Hodgepodge Tree

There’s a town in Michigan that we Prince’s would go to this time of year called Frankenmuth. Frankenmuth is known for a couple of things. It is a touristy town with horse drawn carriages and covered bridges and quaint shops selling touristy type of things like fudge and blown glass. There are a couple of famous restaurants that serve family style German chicken. (I have a funny story about eating at one of those restaurants, Zender’s Bavarian Inn. Remember everything is served family style and one of the items brought to our table was liver pâté. Unfortunately, Karla didn’t know what the “brown scoop of something” was and assumed it to be chocolate butter. Have you ever heard of chocolate butter? Me, neither. Still, I know this… whatever chocolate butter would taste like if such a thing existed, it would be nothing like liver pâté. Anyway, she ate a big bite of the “chocolate butter” and nearly came unglued as he gagged and coughed a lung all the way to Bavaria. It was quite amusing, although I am not sure that Karla shared in the humor.) Frankenmuth is also home to the largest Christmas store in the world, Bronner’s Christmas Wonderland.

Bronner’s Christmas Store is about the size of five and a half football fields. You read that right: FIVE and ONE HALF FOOTBALL FIELDS of Christmas stuff. Try to imagine thousands of ornaments, nativity scenes, and artificial trees packed on five and a half football fields, and you can begin to picture what Bronner’s is like. It’s a Christmas Crazy Super Store. And at this time of the year, we would head to Frankenmuth for hot cocoa and Bronner’s so the boys could pick out an ornament for the year’s Christmas tree.

From past shopping excursions, on our tree will be a Bat mobile ornament, a Tasmanian Devil on a motorcycle ornament, several University of Michigan ornaments, a giant icicle ornament, and there’s even a pickle ornament. I’m not exactly sure how University of Michigan ornaments or a pickle ornament convey the story of Christmas—but they will be on our tree.

Actually, we have several Christmas trees in our house. We have “Karla’s tree.” That’s the tree that has all things pretty and frilly and girly and it’s the tree that we boys are not allowed to touch (I think Karla prefers that we don’t even look at it!). We will have a snowman tree which has lots of snowmen ornaments. There are trees with just lights, some with no lights and some that have ornaments and lights. Maggie our dog even has a tree—filled with doggie ornaments. But my favorite tree is the one with the bat mobile, pickle and sports themed ornaments. It also has some of the handmade ornaments the boys have made through the years, and ornaments that friends and past church folks have given us. The tree is a hodgepodge of ornaments and decorations and unlike the “Karla Tree,” ”Snowman Tree,” and “Maggie Tree” there is no theme, no color coordination, no rhyme, no reason.

Tonight is the night that we are going to decorate our hodgepodge tree. It’s one of my favorite nights of the entire year as we pull out the Christmas CD’s, make some popcorn and unwrap all those ornaments from Bronner’s Christmas Store. You see, we won’t simply be placing Christmas bulbs on a tree, but rather we’ll be putting our memories on the tree. There will be memories of when the boys were younger and memories of friends and families. As we are hanging the tinsel, lights and ornaments, I am sure there will be many comments like: “Do you remember when we got this one?” or “Do you remember who gave us this bulb?” And once again it will give Karla and me an opportunity to share, with the boys, stories of family, friends and faith that has led us to this point in our lives. A few of the ornaments were gifts from my missionary friend, Rod—as we hang those ornaments it will give us another opportunity to pray for him. A few of the ornaments were given by folks that have since been “promoted on to glory” and it will give us opportunity to pray a prayer of thanks for how God used those givers to touch our lives. There will be a couple of “Baby’s First Ornaments” that will remind us of happy times in Bad Axe and Fraser, Michigan when our Christmas presents and decorations were sparse but the joy of Christ was just as great as we celebrated with a new baby that had graced our home. Yes, tonight is going to be a wonderful night… I can hardly wait to share these moments with my family.

I hope that as we enter the Advent season, you and your family will have moments like this too. My prayer is that you will have opportunity to remember the past joys and to build future memories. Don’t get so wrapped up in the stuff of Christmas or the business of Christmas so that you forget to create memories and moments to share God’s grace with those you love.

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