Imagine how many of their friends heard the story about how “my dad almost caught Santa!”
Sweet memories! Merry Christmas!
Christmas memory SLIDE:
We always had white flocked trees with color coordinated balls. One year, my Italian father went alone to get the usual white tree, but came home with a huge, gorgeously shaped, HOT PINK flocked tree. He thought it was absolutely beautiful. My Irish mother hated it; he was honestly stunned she didn’t like it. She only consented to keep it when he promised to purchase white ball ornaments for it. At five pm on Christmas Day, my mother whisked the balls off and put the tree out on the curb for the garbage truck the next day. She wanted it gone!
BUT, before the garbage truck came, the Santa Ana winds came.
In the space of thirty minutes, the Santa Anas blew all the flocking off the tree and all over the yards in our neighborhood. My mother, embarrassed that we’d made a mess— a HOT PINK mess— of the entire street (and that all our neighbors would know we’d had a pink tree), gave the order that we kids go gather every bit of that flocking from the neighbors’ yards. We scattered and did our level best to collect the pink fluff from gutters, lawns, planters, and porches.
The Year of the Pink Tree lives in our memories forever and I have a little collection of pink Christmas tree decorations. Best Christmas ever!