Kinkade shares one final holiday memory

When I was younger, at home, I used to sit for long periods of time in the big chair by the bay window and look at our Christmas tree.

Yes, we played games about "I spy something pink," et cetera. But sitting there alone, I just looked at the ornaments, enjoying them and trying to memorize them.

First of all, I should tell you our tree, a fresh-cut one, was mounted on an X of two boards. Then it sat down inside a big, galvanized wash tub that was set on newspapers on our hardwood floor. Then the tub had a lot of water poured into it, which continually had to be refilled because we had dry heat from radiators, one of which was close to the big chair where I was sitting.

There was always a cup hook on the wall of the bay window for tying the tree to it, in case the cat tried to climb it. Lastly, an old, white sheet was clipped by clothespin to the top of the big tub, then flounced out to look like snow.

We had lights on our tree — just regular colored lights. No, come to think of it, I think we had a few big, round snowball ones made by GE. Then we had some silver foil roping that used to be on Grammie Scott's tree.

On top of the tree was a star that had two layers. The outside was a silver color while the inside was red. There was a hole in the middle so it could fit over a white Christmas light. There were two very old ornaments that were put in safe places on the tree. They were saved from the fire in the farmhouse where Mum was raised, on the Bean Road in Mt. Vernon, Maine. It happened sometime in 1940, after Mum left home, was graduated from Monmouth Academy in June 1939 and then married to Daddy, Hubert Glenn Scott, on Nov. 29, 1939.

Grandpa and Grammie Bean had some company visiting them, who had left for home, when the fire started in what was Mum's bedroom upstairs. It started in the wallpaper that covered the brick chimney that went through her room to the roof. There was no saving the house because the horse-drawn fire truck was in the village 4 miles away.

Neighbors tried to help. Only two things I heard were saved. One was the big grand piano, which was black but the kind that is in the parlor of the Presbyterian Church, and turned into a fancy desk. The other thing was the Christmas ornaments. Surely, Mum had more than two of them, but all I know is my sister has the angel and I have the peach.

She has a beautiful, white-faced, gold-haired angel's head, which she keeps in a special glass display case in her living room in Oakland, Maine. Mine is a round glass ornament, covered with frosted stuff that has the blush of a rosy peach. It is kept in a special black box, like would hold a corsage, with a piece of cellophane you could look through. All you see is wrinkled tissue paper, wrapped around the peach, which is put in a very special, safe place on Glenn's and my Christmas tree.

There were other old, silver, round balls with red roses, et cetera, and, of course, gummy lumps made by us kids. I have one or two of the silver bells. The bells are covered with silver foil, one at the end of each strand of three rows of silver beads, all looped at the top into a bow.

One of my favorite ornaments, more modern, was a clear glass one that held a snowman. The snowman's nose was a little, red ball, I think, that had popped, like a kernel of popcorn. I have the red plastic Santa that hung by a string. In fact, all the ornaments hung by strings because we didn't have metal hooks or paper clips sprung open.

There were other ornaments too. I'll just mention tinsel was carefully placed over the boughs, except we kids just threw some of the old pieces wherever they would land on a bough, because they were short and crinkled.

The last thing I'll mention, which Glenn and I put on our tree, is a set of small jingle bells, tied together by a long ribbon, knotted around each little bell. They still jingle gently, after all these years. The whole strand of bells is about 2 1/2 feet long and always goes along the bottom branches of the tree, just like it did in my childhood home.

It wasn't for us. It was for the cat to bat at. Well, I can't say that, even though you know what I mean. But we're getting to the good part — those little, round jingle bells were fastened to my bloomers when I was little.