  I have many fond memories of our past Christmas’ as the boys were growing up. The first Christmas we celebrated after leaving the commune was the first we celebrated as a family. Asa (the oldest) was about four years old, Nathanael (the second) was two and Matthew (the third) was a little over one year old.
My memories of that first Christmas are vague, we didn’t have a tree or other decorations to make our rented trailer festive. The following year we were renting a house in the country. Our marvelous landlord told us we could cut down a Christmas tree anywhere on the 200 acres he owned. This became a tradition. Each year Duane and I would bundle up the boys and trek on into the woods in search of a Christmas tree. The snow wasn’t very deep, but we still needed to help the boys through the deeper places because their tiny legs were short. To them it seemed as if we’d been walking for hours, but we’d only gone into the woods a couple hundred feet. That first year we decided to cut down a Balsam pine tree. We forgot to measure the height we needed so we “eyeballed” it.
The boys were so excited as we dragged the tree back to the house. They were very tired when we finally got home, but excitement kept them from complaining. Kicking off their boots, hats, mittens and coats, they waited to see what we would do next. We still didn’t have many decorations. A friend had given me some that her mother made in a craft class out of beads and colored pipe cleaners. Asa made one or two in kindergarten that year too. I popped lots of popcorn, filling a brown grocery bag with it so we could make a garland. I remember seeing a popcorn garland in some old movie. We also picked up some fresh cranberries from the store to put on the garland as well.
Not being sure how to make it, each day I would sit with the boys as they watched a children’s program on TV and string popcorn and cranberries. Ten popcorn then one cranberry, repeating as many times as needed. I used a sewing needle and regular sewing thread that was doubled. When I would run out of thread I simply tied on more. I started the garland a few days before we got the tree and finished it after I tried it out to see if I needed more.
I actually had too much of the garland and had to cut some off. After getting the tree up to the house, we realized that it was too tall. It’s amazing how a tree can look a certain size in the great outdoors and then be a different size when you try to bring it into the house. 
