Christmas past, present and future

After many years of preparing and celebrating Christmas “behind schedule.”

- CITO BELTRAN

I decided to put up the Christmas tree on the first week of December.I know some of you have put up your Christmas trees as early as mid-September, but my wife who comes from the Netherlands set down a rule that Christmas trees don’t go up before the 15th of December!

This year I broke from tradition and a new rule evolved — if you want your Christmas tree up, then you have to get it out of storage, clean it or wash it down from 12 months of tropical dust and decide how to decorate it!

The choice was to use the original-fake 10-ft Christmas tree we always used, or the “White Christmas tree” we bought when we forgot to take the “original” out of storage in our place in Lipa City.

Well, this year, we once again forgot the original so the white one will serve “for just one more year.” I honestly think we also love the “mall bought” white Christmas tree but are just too embarrassed to admit it.

While hanging up a ton of blue shiny or sparkly Christmas balls on our white sparkly tree, I was reminded of my childhood Christmases when you could buy “snow in a can,” which was actually light foam you sprayed on the tree, around the tree, the ornaments and then regretted it because the foam stuck to any surface for life!