During our first year of marriage, Big Strong Man received military money at Christmas -a bonus for active military- and we chose to spend it on Christmas decor. Blue lights, silver ornaments, everything shiny and cool. The vibe was lovely and sophisticated. It made me feel like classy, cold Christmases and snowflakes and ice skating...great imagery for us as we were living on Prince's Lake in our itty-bitty cottage house. Faithfully, we have always had our "blue" tree.
This year, our house was upgraded from the itty-bitty cottage of first year marriage to the home we now own with all the extra space, including a 20+ foot ceiling under which our staircase circles. As Christmas was approaching, BSM envisioned that this would be where our tree would stand, proud and tall... funny thing though, an 8-foot tall Christmas tree is dwarfed in a space this high. Naturally, we needed an upgrade.
We were able to find a 12-foot tree someone was selling and we gratefully made it ours.
Now, because we chose to keep our 8-footer (which was relocated to the front room), all of our mix-matched ornaments of years and years of children and keepsakes had a home so it was natural that the 12-footer would become the destination for all those blue and silver shiny ornaments and lights...but blue and silver only go so far when you add an additional 4-feet of tree, and our Christmas Beauty was looking a little...sparce. Then Post-Christmas Day happened. The wonderful magic of an instant 50% off on December 26th had McFive at Walmart, scouring shelves for anything shiny and cool. But then I saw it....
Zeplin picked up a box full of green, gold, and red ornaments. Although we were clear on silver and blue, he still picked it up and asked me what I thought, thus altering our Christmas trajectory that faithful day. I told him to put it back, the colors weren't right, but I must have looked forlornly at them, or mentioned something along the lines of how those colors looked like true Christmas, because moments later Big Strong Man asked me if I wanted to change our colors- and I did! Here's the thing, I felt like blue and silver were an us thing, a representation of who we were all those years ago. I would never have had assumed we could change the colors. But we could, and we did, and ya'll, I am so glad. Instead of mourning over the change, I have welcomed it with open hands. It is refreshing to me and something all 5 of us did together. This is our new chapter.
Blue and Silver spoke to me of cold winters and sophisticated beauty but red and green -and gold!- these colors speak of old-timey Christmases: simplistic and yet, so...entirely...lovely.
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