Fire Hazards of the Past . . .

My mother was born and raised in Germany. She came over to the United States after the War. After working for a year, she married my father who she had met in Germany. The rest, as they say, is history.

My mother brought several traditions from her childhood to our family. One of them that is very memorable were the candles on our Christmas tree. Yes, we actually had open flames on a pine tree! Although we never had a mishap, I never continued this practice in my own home. I figured why tempt fate at this point in life?

Anyway, decorating for Christmas was always a major event at our home. My mother would bring out the 'Christmas Box' with it's carefully saved tinsel, candles, candle holders, tiny crib scene, etc. My mother had been greatly influenced, in her youth, by a stately tree that was decorated solely with shimmering strands of silver tinsel, silver stars, and candles. Every year, we tried to replicate this memory for her. It was  tedious job as I had to put the tinsel on, one strand at a time, starting from the inner part of each and every branch. It was worth it, however, once everything was in place and the fluttering of the candles shivered the fragile tinsel. The smell of the candle wax and pine tree is a sensory memory I carry with me to this day.

And, if the fact that we had burning candles on our tree wasn't enough, come the New Year, we would let the candles burn themselves out while we sat in the dark of the evening, talking, and watching the lights go out, one by one. We used to give each candle a 'name' of a friend or relative and that was our 'fortune telling' game because who ever's light went out first, would be the first to leave this world in the New Year. Naturally, it was in fun and not one of our candle prophecies ever came true.

I knew I was grown up when we would visit my mother for Christmas and once we were seated at church for Midnight Mass, I'd start worrying . . ."Did we, indeed, extinguish all the candles?" My husband would glance over at me and I knew he was thinking the same thing! Some of the magic had left!

My children love color so we let them decorate the tree with any and everything each  year. Now, we have to wait for them to come home from college on vacation and the whole process isn't quite the same as I enjoyed with my parents when I was growing up and that is a bit sad to me. I just hope that as they adorn the tree with our mismatched garlands and ornaments, they are accumulating some special memories, too. Oh, and NO, I have NEVER had candles on our tree.