I sat down with my dad to talk about where my love of Christmas decorations actually comes from. I learned so much, and also realized lots of ways my attitude toward Christmas decor can help me with my other messy middles

We traced it back to his childhood in Cincinnati, going downtown to see the massive Christmas window displays. Then to the era of cutting down trees so big they had to be shoved through doorways with a running start. And eventually to our family's current setup featuring a 16-foot tree, 27 strands of lights, and so many handmade and gifted ornaments to tell much of our family story.

This conversation gave me something I didn't expect. It's not about perfection or magazine-worthy aesthetics. It's about embracing what my dad calls "grandiose chaos" - the kind of Christmas that's overflowing, colorful, chaotic, and full of genuine joy.

We cover the logistics of transporting a freshly-cut tree in a 1964 Ford Galaxy convertible, why bubble lights are non-negotiable, how my dad became the MacGyver of Christmas repairs, and why every ornament on our tree tells a story. From wedding favors to Coca-Cola memorabilia to the things my mom made.

Whether you're the type of person who loves an all-white-lights Christmas tree or a tacky decor lover, I hope you see some of your own traditions in this episode.

Mentioned in This Episode

Real Talk Conversations Guide - A framework I created for having intentional conversations with people in your life to document stories and make connections. If you want to have a conversation like this with someone you love, this guide walks you through how to do it.

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Welcome to Sharing the Middle, where we share the messy middles of life.

I'm Lacey, your friend in the middle and guide.

And today's messiness is a good messiness.

We're talking to my dad about Christmas and my love of Christmas decorations.

Sarah and I were talking a few weeks ago, and I had this thought of, well, I get my love of Christmas decorations and Christmas in general from my dad.

And I wanted to know more about that.

You'll hear we land on.

Our love of Christmas is embracing the chaoticness of it.

It's not your picturesque, perfect painting Christmas.

There's lights, there's handmade twinkling and all that stuff.

And that's why I love it.

It felt nice to talk to him and learn about that.

You also get to hear my dad for the first time.

It's a long time coming because we recorded this once and I messed up, but we were recorded in again, and it worked.

I'm so happy to have this conversation one to share with you.

All right.

But this is one of those times where I encourage you to have conversations like this with the people in your life to explore things in an intentional manner.

I did make, like, a guide for you if that's something that you want to do.

It's called Real Talk Conversations.

And just how you can have these kinds of intentional conversations and make connections with people in your life to tell your story and document it.

Because now I have this gift of my dad talking about Christmas, and that's amazing.

So I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

And let's jump right in.

Okay.

We're trying this again.

We recorded in person, and I thought I was all like with it and had my setup up, and I was wrong, and I was wrong about levels and stuff.

We're recording this again, so hopefully there's still the magic.

We don't have the magic of my Christmas tree twinkling, but that's okay.

I'm talking to you, my dad, Bob.

I was editing, trying to edit the other one, and I realized I put Bob with in parentheses dad because it felt weird to refer to you as Bob.

So, anyway, that's.

Well, we did.

We had to.

Dad and Bob are the same people now.

So, yeah, we're all on the same page.

But I love Christmas.

Specifically, I love Christmas decorations.

But I get that love.

I was thinking about it, and I realized that I get that love of Christmas from you.

And I didn't know where that came from, so I wanted to talk to you about where that originated.

You know, where it came from, but you don't know where it originated.

How's that?

Sure.

And I was thinking about it even more and I, I'll go back to the beginning, back when I was a child and lived in Santa Claus still.

And when my mom would take us to downtown Cincinnati, the McAlphins or shelters, and they had huge fantastic displays in the windows.

And I remember those and, and that a lot of the stuff that we're going to talk about later comes from that particular memory.

The life size things and you know, the lights and the different scenery and stuff like that.

And so that's, that's the beginning of that.

And my mom and dad would.

On Christmas Eve, you, you didn't even.

There wasn't very much decorating going on.

There was some.

But then on Christmas Eve, Christmas, bam.

You'd wake up the next morning and there was a tree and there was decorations and you know, I don't think there was that many, many outdoor lights.

I think that started after my dad passed away.

Then as I got older and I be.

And I, I started staying up with my parents and it saw what it took to put up a tree that nobody even knew was there to decorate a tree, to put the lights on it.

You know, my brother with all his tricks and how to get lights to work and things like that.

And I learned all that from, from my dad and from my brothers and from things that I tried myself.

Then the next step came was the huge tree.

My mom at our house, we had 11 foot ceilings and the room was a pretty good sized room.

It was maybe, I don't know, 18 by 25 or something like that.

Like four windows across the front of the house there.

And the tree was put in the center of the windows.

And so after my dad passed away, I was 16, 17 years old.

Actually I was 15.

But I turned 16 immediately and started driving.

And my mom said, go get a tree.

And I said, okay.

And then a friend of mine said, hey, I know where you can go get some.

You know, I hear where you cut your own tree down.

So we tried that out.

So we drove out to Amelia, Ohio, which is about 20 miles east of Cincinnati.

And we went and we cut down a big tree because it had to be a big tree because we have 11 foot ceilings.

So.

And we got this big tree.

It was actually the top half of a regular tree, but it just, it looks so full and perfect.

So we cut it and we put it up on top the car and we kind of held it in place and drove back to my mom's house.

And my brother said, I have logistical questions.

Did you have the top down?

Yes, yes.

So you're driving?

Oh, no.

My buddy was dry, was holding it tight, and we.

We had it roped down with the doors shut on the road.

So we were pretty ingenious.

No.

Then I can only figure out, oh, my gosh, you had to clean that up.

Yeah, that's true.

So then my brothers were a little upset with me because it was so big, but we had to get.

You'd have to get running starts to get them through the doorway.

And of course, you had to go, you know, the.

The base in first, so that didn't break the trees as you ripped it through the doorway.

So we set it up and it touched the ceiling and put a scrape on the ceiling.

We started doing that.

And then I started taking my other brothers with me because they got a little bit older as time went on.

And we'd send Jeff, my youngest brother, up a tree, and he would go up and probably get to the middle of it, then put his hand up, and we would figure that that was probably close to 8 or 9ft.

9 or 10ft.

And so if it was 3ft above that, then that was good.

And we cut it off where his feet were and then we cleaned it up.

And.

And.

And again, my brothers would complain that it was so big.

And I kind of enjoyed that part of that because.

Irritating them.

So.

So then my mom bought some lights and asked me to put them up.

So we started putting those up, and my brothers and I, we got up on the roof.

And younger brothers, the older brothers were in the service.

I was in the Navy, one was in the Army.

And so we got up on the roof and we put it around, and we put it around windows and just got bigger and bigger and bigger.

And so then when Carolyn and I got married and we decided that we wanted to got one.

Wasn't a big one, though, because we just lived in a little apartment and they only had the two kids and one with a baby.

So then when the kids started coming around more and more kids, and we started being a little more grandiose with it.

And in Fort Thomas we had these two bay windows, and Grammy came up with the idea to build little elves and Santa Claus and Mrs. Claus and the elves were made out of three liter bottles with, well, Styrofoam and the spoons, eyes with Styrofoam, white spoons with eye with blue.

Blue dots and Black dots and stuff like that.

And then the, the body, the arms and the legs were made of hangers with paper rolls or paper towel rolls.

Clothing.

And being the seamstress that she was.

And she made little.

They weren't boots, but they were.

They looked like boots.

They were just laying flat.

We got a ladder.

We put one up on the ladder, putting up lights.

We put one down below, handing the lights up.

And then we put a girl kneeling down, wrapping papers with bows and ribbons.

And then Santa Claus was in a.

Sitting in a chair.

And Santa Claus was actually about 4ft tall.

So was Mrs. Claus.

These were.

These weren't a little bitty things.

They were.

They were.

They were substantial.

Yes.

They were just shy of real size.

Yes.

Two to size.

And they.

And people could drive by and see them and.

And again, that takes me Back to the McAlpins and Chillito's when I was started.

I remember going down Cincinnati and shopping at Christmas time.

So you had a start of window decorating.

I. I just had a memory.

Did we used to go town and like look at trains or something?

Yes, there was a couple places that we would do that.

Yeah.

Which brought me trains that I used to have in my setups.

Okay, nice.

So when we moved up here to the tip, we had a train set that went around the town and also went out.

Out of town and went out under Polar Mountain.

And up on Polar Mountain was a little scene where people were skating.

And it was just a.

It was a little, I don't know, six by six or something like that sitting up on this mountain.

And it was.

There was snow all around and there were bears sled riding and skating down the mountain.

Then down below you had a big field and kids were putting up a snowman in the field.

And a train went around the town and then went out about.

And then came back in and would automatically change.

They're going around the town to automatically going to the.

Out and around.

So this was probably about, oh, I'd say seven, eight feet long.

Yeah, eight by four by eight.

Actually what it was.

And so we have that up and then we had the winter wonderland, which was on a table back behind the couch against the wall.

It's probably about almost as long, six or seven feet, but that's only about three feet wide.

And in that you have Santas in a air balloon.

Yeah, an air balloon going around in circles.

And then there's two or three fun houses and skating rink and Santa and Mrs. Claus are dancing and there's music going on and he Had a big Ferris wheel and it was just a, you know, all the ground was snow covered and we, we had it on white cotton and then we had, you know, snow, what they call flocked trees, little black trees and bushes and stuff all around the outside.

Created that wonderland.

Then we have a 16 foot tree, artificial now, but originally we would go out and chop down trees.

Cut them down.

Not chop them down, we cut them down and we'd bring them back and put them up.

We had to bring them through the door and you know, they were 15, 16ft long.

And so you had to come in and maneuver around, you know, come in, go straight all the way through and then pivot and turn and come into the big fan room and.

So many needles.

Yes, yes.

That's another thing that we had to clean up.

But that still goes on.

But I think one of the biggest ones I remember was the blue spruce from.

Was it Fulton Farms and Mrs. Fulton.

We went there and they had trees that they sold us that were pre cut but they weren't big enough.

Guy said, well, I know a really big blue spruce if you want to go to it and see it.

I said, sure, let's go.

So there was a big, huge, I don't know, almost 20ft tall blue spruce.

And we, we took that, we cut that down from Mrs. Fulton's front yard, brought that home and put that up.

And that was probably one of the last big ones that we had because.

I was definitely one of the most epic.

Yeah.

When I think like, you know, and.

But it also is just so funny that it's like, well, we don't have any other big enough trees.

Do you want to chop this one down by our house?

And she, she wanted it gone.

So it worked out.

Beautiful tree.

Yeah.

And it was a heck of a price too.

You know, they, we were doing them a favor also.

But then we, you know, the bubble lights, you know, that was something that I saw, I was a kid and I, I can't believe people don't know what they are, but they'll come to my house and come to our house and they say what are those?

And found the bubble lights in there.

Oh, neat.

I said, where do you get those from?

Is that specially not that special?

You can get it anywhere.

I don't know why people didn't know about those.

But you know, we always had bubble lights on the trees.

We have the candy chain.

What would you call that?

It's candy garland.

They used to have popcorn sewn together or whatever.

This is candy.

And then we have the.

The Crayola lights.

They look like Crayolas.

I do want to pause real quick and say that these lights are all very colorful.

It is a very colorful.

It is not like a white lights tree.

It all does not match.

I don't think you're allowed to have white or clear lights on this tree.

I agree.

I don't know.

I mean, mom doesn't agree, but.

Well, that's her tree.

That's her tree.

That's her own big tree now.

And it's all white and lace and crystal and things like that.

But this.

This tree has always had homemade decorations.

Things that you made or your brothers and sisters made at school or at crafts and when you were.

I don't know, I guess you were kindergarten or first grade in West Virginia, and Mom started making decorations.

I wasn't even in school yet in West Virginia.

We moved when I was three.

Wow.

Well, you know what it was?

Maybe it was Amy or Becky and you.

She dragged you along with her, and that's why the teacher loved you.

Okay.

Because you were probably one.

It was always around for the ride.

So we.

She started making, you know, little wooden mice or little lacy.

One of those called the doilies is what I call them starch.

They're like starch.

Lace.

What'd you call that?

Croquet?

It's crochet.

Crochet, that's it.

Yeah.

They're like crocheted.

Doily is the word that's coming to mind, too.

So.

All right, so.

And, you know, she'd have them.

They were white and they had, you know, stardust on them or whatever you're gonna call it.

Pink ribbon.

Oh, yeah, pink ribbon.

But there was also, you know, pieces of apple that were baked and red and green on the.

Like a stem.

Okay.

But it was actually a sliver.

What else is there?

Oh, pipe cleaner.

Different color pipe cleaner.

Critters.

And then like two clothes pins put together to look like a reindeer, you know, decorated with eyes and mo.

And what else that she made?

But she made all kinds of things.

And they sold them as a Christmas store or whatever.

At the store?

Yeah.

Like the market.

Holiday market.

Yeah, yeah, Christmas market.

And so we started doing that.

But Carolyn, actually, our first tree, we couldn't really afford big ornaments and stuff like that, so she bought a little wooden.

Little wooden set where she painted her own ornaments.

Okay.

And we still have.

We still have some of those.

And they were probably three or four inch around or, you know, anywhere down to two and a half to three inches.

And so because you had to have a lot of color.

You had to have a lot of.

Every limb had to have a something on.

Okay, that's.

I don't know if that's a rule of thumb, but it's the rule of your thumb.

And then, like I said, we also have many different specialty lights.

Like I talked about the bubble lights, you know, we have icicle lights.

We have reindeer lights.

We have the Crayolas.

And actually the lights are vibrant in color and they look like Crayolas, but they don't have the paper on them, just the light.

We also have M M lights.

M M's, Yeah, little M M people on them.

And that was.

We still have all of those, by the way.

And those are going to be put up very shortly.

The tree is like a.

It.

It becomes like a story of our family.

Right?

Like, you hear all these different parts of our lives.

The other part of it that we didn't talk about last time.

So I'm glad I'm bringing it now.

We have a lot of Coca Cola memorabilia.

I thought about that, and let me tell you about that.

The Coca Cola rep, he and I got along very well.

And every Christmas, 25 years, this guy gave me a Coca Cola ornament.

And they're pretty neat things, like a.

Like a little airplane, little biplane is what it was, with a reindeer flying it.

There's, you know, Santa drinking a Coca Cola.

There's a bear.

You know, the polar bears when.

When Coke was using polar bears a lot.

There's polar bears drinking Coca Cola or sliding down a.

On a sleigh with.

With a bottle of Coke in his hand or, you know, big balls or, you know, that say Coke.

Oh, big Santas, they're probably 3 or 4 inches in diameter, and Santa is sitting on a wreath or something like that.

And so there's a lot of Coca Cola memorabilia.

Well, we have.

We have those little bears.

We have.

Are Wendy's ornaments.

I can see the one in my head.

That's like a stained glass window.

Yeah, Wendy's.

Yeah, Wendy's ornaments.

Oh, and there's also.

Carolyn took stained glassing, so there's little stained glass.

There's a little stained glass.

What's the soldier?

The Little Drummer Boy.

I can see him.

And there's a Little Drummer Boy.

But it's also.

Nutcracker.

Yeah, Nutcracker, Soldier.

Okay.

There's.

Oh, pinnacles.

But then we also.

Then you guys started getting married, and then in all of the weddings.

Favors.

Is that what it were?

Gifts?

What were they?

Favors?

Yeah, our Favors for our wedding.

Like you have in your tree, you have test tubes filled with lavender.

Lavender.

That's it.

Okay.

And then it has a nice pretty silver or gold ribbon holding it in place.

And.

And Lacy, or Amy had the stars.

The little stars.

And Becky had the little doilies.

I don't know what.

Rafia.

Randy had the Celtic knots.

We were having to.

Yes.

Never want to see Rafia again in my life because of how many times we had to make this.

Oh, okay.

We'll say, I. I love.

I love.

Every once in a while, I'll get a message from somebody that's like, we just put up our tree and put up your ornament.

Your wedding was so fun.

So even though our wedding was in April, we.

We get little things like that during Christmas time.

I didn't realize this before, but the tree really does tell a story of where we came from and that kind of stuff, which we've taken in my household.

I'm really glad that Joe's also a Christmas person, that now our Christmas tree.

Also a lot of stories because we get ornaments whenever we travel somewhere.

He and I get each other an ornament every year as, like, a symbol of the year for us.

I didn't even realize how much I took that part of Christmas decorations into my house as well.

And we.

Everybody has baby's first Christmas, you know, Lacy's first Christmas or baby's first Christmas or whatever.

You know, Rob, Amy, Becky, they all got that.

And then they all got personal, you know, with their name.

And then there was the things that you made in school with your name song.

Sometimes there are just ornaments that have bad pictures of each other that we like to hang.

And by we, it's people like to hang of me in the middle of the tree that they think it's hilarious.

So.

You might get that from their mother.

Yeah, sure.

I worked at Hickory Farms when I was getting out of high school and going into college.

And Hickory Farms was a meat and cheese delicate.

Well, I wouldn't call it delicate anyway, but had different kind of food from different countries.

And so I would bring home a bunch of different meats and cheeses and oysters and cocktail sauce and shrimp and, you know, Braunschweigger and onions and pickles and mustards.

Different kinds of mustards and all kinds of different cheeses.

And we would eat this snack on all this stuff while we put the tree up.

Okay.

And so that's another part of it.

That way, everybody's involved and everybody gets to see it and everybody gets to See where.

When they place that picture of you that you don't like right in the center of the tree, everybody gets to see that.

They enjoy letting me know exactly where it is.

Yes.

And then going out and getting the tree was.

Was a.

Was a big tradition because, you know, we start, as I told you, we started out with my brother going up top.

We cut off the tree that we thought was based on his.

His stature.

But then when we were cutting them down with you guys, you know, we'd all walk around and in the snow, and what about this tree?

Oh, what about this tree?

What about this?

And this would take.

This would take 45 minutes to an hour.

This was not a quick trip because you had to please six, seven people.

And it's also funny that I could probably tell you different preferences of trees of the per.

Of the different people in our household.

Like, mom would prefer a taller, skinnier tree.

Dad wants it as, like, wide and full as possible.

Amy's looking for that perfect shape.

Like, I just.

I can know as well.

Yep.

You know, and if there was a.

If there was a hole, we'd find a tree that we thought was perfect, but it had a hole here and there.

But we.

We figured out a way to fix that because we.

I bought great big balls ornaments.

I'm not talking big.

I'm talking, you know, some of them 8, 9, 10, 12 inches wide that you would hang inside a tree.

And plus, you.

When you decorate a tree, you also have to decorate it from the inside out.

It's not everything is on the outside.

You know, we want to run lights down the middle of the tree so that you can see it from wherever, all the way around the tree.

It gives it depth.

That's another thing.

Gotta have depth.

And that's Carolyn's.

What would you call her expertise?

Yeah, interior designer expertise.

Okay.

And so you had to have depth in these great big ornaments.

And some of the bears that we have with, well, they fill the holes and the gaps.

So if a tree that was already pretty full really looked full.

Okay.

And then.

And that's the idea, and that's the.

The grandioseness of it.

If that's a word.

I'm not sure that's a word.

You know what it means?

Okay.

That's where most of it came from.

A lot of it.

It still picked up as time went on.

Yeah.

I still think it's crazy that your parents and brothers and sisters that were.

Who are older put up a tree in the middle of the night.

And, like, Santa brought the Tree and put it like that blows my mind.

Yes.

And I'm telling you right now.

When I was older and I was doing.

You would not believe what it takes to put all the toys together.

Okay?

You had to put bikes together, you had to put dollhouses together.

You had to put, you know, racetracks together.

You had to wagons and, you know, furniture for.

For babies and doll and dollhouse stuff and Easy Bake Oven.

All that had to be out and ready to go.

Now, there were some packages that were wrapped up and that had to be done, too.

But my mom would, you know, he had 10 kids in his house.

Where could you go and hide stuff?

Okay, I found out where they hid it, but I got in trouble doing that.

I was probably.

But I didn't even know what it was.

It was an accident, and I don't know why I got in trouble.

They said I was snooping for Christmas, but I wasn't.

I didn't know it was Christmas stuff.

I still didn't know it.

I didn't realize that's how stupid I was.

Okay.

When I believed, I believed.

But I think there's always been a lot of people.

So you have 10.

You're one of 10.

Mom's one of six.

There's five kids in our family, which.

It's a lot of people.

And I think that also really contributes to the grandioseness as well.

When you have so many people, you fill a room in so many ways.

Yes, yes.

And.

And you find ways to use their stuff, the stuff that they made, the stuff that they.

They gave, you know, they gave you.

We also.

You guys also gave us stuff for Christmas to put on the tree.

And then you have the decorations all around the globes.

Mom was into collecting, you know, snow globes or whatever you want Christmas globes or whatever.

And so she's got a bunch of those given to her by her cousins and her aunts and uncles and stuff like that.

We also have the, you know, homemade tree.

The tree apron down at the bottom on the floor.

You know, we have three or four of those with this great big tree.

Actually.

We have a tablecloth that my mom made, a Christmas tablecloth, green with red on it.

And that's how big of a tree skirt you have to have.

These little things that you buy at the store are cute, but they're not big enough to cover.

We talked about the Santa scene in the front window at the house in Fort Thomas that transferred into a vignette that sits on bookshelves.

Bookshelf, top of bookshelves.

Next to a fireplace because it's a two story living room.

Which now that you said the window dressing thing, I'm like, yeah, it makes sense.

You just upgraded your window dressings just.

Yeah, yeah.

To animatronics.

Well, but also we have trees in our front windows on the inside.

With the Carol, they're probably four or five feet tall, too.

Yeah, but.

But the.

The dad is.

Is four feet tall.

The mom is, you know, close to that.

And then the kids are three and a half feet tall.

And, you know, they're dressed up like.

They call them the characters from this.

Is that Dickens?

Yeah.

Christmas Carol.

Yeah, yeah.

And they have a fence and a front lamp and they have pine trees, and that is probably what, six, seven feet wide.

And that's a story tall, too.

So they have snow and lights and.

You always wanted us to record singing carols, we just never did it.

That's true.

That's true.

We did some of them.

Change the words a little bit.

So, like, Mark.

Yeah.

Would you like to tell this story?

Joe and I were talking about it the other day.

I would park the Herald Angels Sing.

I would tell Lacy that it was.

The words were Mark and Harold like to sing and so she was about to get married for you.

No, I. I mean, it took me a long time because my dad told me that.

So I was like, yeah, those are the words.

And they sound kind of right, I.

Mean, right with it, don't they?

Mark and Harold, they seem like cool dudes.

They just like to sing just about anything, I think is what those are the exact words.

And then we have the.

Of course we have bells.

We had bells on the tree at one time.

We moved those because they're very nice looking gold bells with red ribbon holding them.

And they play multiple songs, I think like 12, 13 Christmas songs.

And so those are in the archway above the other side of the fireplace.

Okay.

With the.

The big family picture.

They.

They embroider a big family picture in a bells and wreath or.

That's not what a wreath would say.

Oh, Carol garland.

Yeah.

Garland and lights and birds and cardinals.

And I can hear the bells.

Like the.

I could hear them in my head.

If I was.

If I was thinking, I could have had that set up so you could hear it as part of this.

It's okay.

You're putting up the tree today, right?

Well, we're putting the tree up and maybe some lights on it.

Then Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday, I'm not sure what day it is.

We might have somebody over to put all of the ornaments on.

And there are boxes and boxes of ornaments.

Boxes and boxes and boxes, boxes and boxes.

And I was.

I would just get the lights out.

There are 27 strand lights.

Now.

They're all not huge.

You know, there's like I said the specialty lights or whatever, but when we add them all up, there's 20 lights on this thing.

There are three extension cords.

It's so normal for me.

But it was always so funny with my friends coming over when we were young, when I was younger.

They have the biggest tree and have you seen their tree?

And it just became such a part of like, you know, you have to go to their house and see the tree.

Oh, Mickey Mouse, Mickey, Mickey Goofy, Minnie and toe.

They all.

They have a band.

One plays a trumpet, another one plays saxophone and a horn.

And I don't think anybody plays me guitar.

But you know, there on the other side, down below, the display from.

With Mr. And Mrs. Claus with all of the.

Or not the ornaments, but the globes that Carolyn has all over the place and things like that.

The other funny thing about having a lot of people is you guys have a stocking for everyone.

Yeah, we do.

And that's.

There's seven on the mantel and then there's 14.

Now the grandkids, little stockings, they take up some.

They hide a lot.

Does Violet have a stocking?

Is did.

Yeah.

Violence got a stocking.

So there's.

That's why I said 14.

Right?

I know.

That's why I was just impressed.

We just got her stocking yesterday.

Well, we bought the stockings.

We bought it.

We bought enough to include Violet.

Okay.

The second round.

They're like little ones, but they do.

They litter the whole mantle area.

And the, and the, the stockings for Carolyn and myself and the kids were all made by Carolyn, by the way, not moms.

Mom didn't make herself one.

And it took years for us to be like, mom, you have to have a stocking.

She had a stocking, but it wasn't.

Wasn't the same one as everybody else's.

So then she went and got a nice one that was as big as ours.

And it's nice.

I did look at.

Because now that I'm like, okay, we're done.

I did look at getting some of the kits and that's too much effort for me.

I'm not going to be embroidering stockings, like often.

Well, then just the detail that we have.

Our stockings are with stocking holders is Santa in a sleigh and it comes with three reindeers.

But we had five kits.

We had to buy two of those so that we had enough reindeers for each kid.

Okay.

So we had.

Now there's Santa with Carolyn's, and then the five kids, each reindeer, and they're probably, I don't know, five, six inches tall.

Of course, the sleigh is nice, and Santa's got a whip in his hand.

And.

And those.

The reindeers are out in front of him.

And those are all the.

They go right across the man.

It's just big enough to hold seven.

So if you had any more, it would not fit.

It's just perfect.

Yeah.

But again, that's pretty grandiose.

You know, you see a lot of stockings, but not with such grand stockings holders.

And so many.

Just because of the number of people in the situation.

Yeah.

The other parts of it come from just wanting to be able to see it.

Thinking of the showroom or the displays that I saw when I was a kid and the.

The extent that my mom and dad went to.

To make Christmas as special as they could.

So.

And evidently, they did a pretty good job.

Well, and it was also one of the things that you got to be in charge of at a certain point.

So that also.

Yeah, makes sense to me, because then also, when Christmas moved from grandma, Your mom's house, it came to our house, and you got all the stuff that went with that.

Yeah, yeah.

My.

My.

My.

After my dad passed away, my brothers were both in the army.

One was in army, ones in Navy gone.

So I was the oldest boy.

And so.

So I took on a lot of things I had to do, and I brought those with me when Carolyn and I got married and we had the kids, and.

And then when my mom got too old, as you said, to handle it at her house, our house was big enough to handle, you know, 25, 30 people.

And now it's gotten up to the Christmas party.

The Last one was 50 people in one house with all the big trees and all the big decorations all over the place.

So it was pretty chaotic.

I think the word chaos sometimes goes.

With pistons, but it's a joyful chaos.

There we go.

That's it.

That's like a joyful, colorful chaos.

The other thing that I want to make sure ends up in this episode as well, or this version is I let.

I figured out that dad is the MacGyver of Christmas.

So, like, nothing gets thrown away.

We just repurpose it or fix it or fix it.

Okay.

And.

And.

And I think each little thing is an example of that.

I told you about the train set, that's.

That was a little, you know, motorized display that showed.

That showed the ice skaters going around in circles, and it got cracked.

So it didn't look good, but it looked better with snow all around it up on.

Up on top of Polar Mountain.

And the Polar Express was.

Was stolen from the Polar Express idea, the name of it.

And then, of course, you have to have polar bears to go with that.

So, I mean, it's a extension of things.

It's a growth.

It's a creativity that, you know, if lights don't work, you flip around till they work, or you, you know, one bubble light works and the other one doesn't light up.

You take it apart and put the bubble light on, the one that works, and they move on.

So you got them all, or the socket doesn't work.

Put a bubble light that's pretty without being on in there.

Boom.

That's right.

That's right.

Or that section of light doesn't work.

It's fine.

Put a big ornament there, you know.

You know what you don't do?

Don't put too many ornaments around the same area.

No, no, no, no.

Oh, yeah.

Well, you can tell when.

When the kids come over to decorate.

Okay.

You can tell where the younger ones were because, you know, three feet and below the apartments were, then you had to be very, very careful because you didn't want them handling the, you know, the expensive.

What's the word I'm looking for?

Handed down.

But anyway, you don't want them because usually the bottom of the tree, when you put presents under the tree, some of those get knocked down.

Putting them in.

Put the presents in, taking them out, whatever.

And we open up the presents in front of the tree so that everybody can see what's going on and.

And see what they're getting and they want to film it.

And every day, every year, we.

I have a camera set up.

It's upstairs shooting down, showing the whole thing, everything that's going on.

And that.

Would you call it that colorful, grandiose chaos?

Christmas chaos.

Okay?

So.

And that's all on.

On video, so you can see it and hear it and.

And it's.

But it is very organized, though, you know, but two or three people under the tree, everybody.

Somebody will go up and get their presents, bring them down, and then we get to see them open it and see what's going on, because, you know, and then we also try to make the meals easy and quick to do because Remy wants to be in there and see the present openings you don't want to be in kitchen cooking all the time, which is fair.

I think that's not happening too much.

We also have to look at the camera and say Merry Christmas.

That's right.

And then the year.

That is another requirement.

So the date of this point, automatic date.

Now.

Oh, I have a question.

I didn't ask.

So when we the.

Your kids.

So me and my brothers and sisters lived in your house.

It was a requirement that we weren't allowed to go downstairs before you all.

And we had to line up on the stairs by age before we came down.

Did your.

Did that come from your family or was that just exactly.

Yeah, and it came from challenge too.

Okay, okay.

But we would all sit on the stairs and in our house, my house was a two family house that we converted into a single family house.

And so you had a door that would come in.

And you would come in the door until four year way.

And to the left would be the first floors door to go in.

And then you went back the hallway and up the steps to the second.

The second part of the house.

Well, that was very convenient because there was 15 steps.

There were 10, 10 of us which tack up on the steps or line up on the steps by age.

And you couldn't see around the corner.

See the.

What became the living room where the Christmas tree was.

I mean you could see lights, reflection of light.

You never saw the light.

You couldn't see the tree.

And then we'd come around the corner and my dad was.

We'd be filming it.

That was probably pretty posh.

We have a. Yeah, he had a bar of lights.

Okay.

And a camera.

Okay.

A video camera.

Okay.

Eight millimeter.

What was that back then?

Kind of like 45s and 33, third record, just 78.

So.

And that's, you know.

And then Carolyn did the same way and you couldn't see when they were on her steps.

You couldn't see.

Okay.

Because we'd have to come all the way down to be able to see what's going on.

I will say so.

When we moved to Tip, we moved from a house that you couldn't see the tree to.

You could see the tree.

But even then I was like, I wouldn't look like, don't look that way.

And I mean I'm a lot younger than everybody else and everybody kept up Santa, I mean as long as possible as well.

Like that was.

Everybody was in.

I remember being like 13 and mom was like, you know Santa's.

You know, I'm like, yeah, mom, you had to tell.

We're all doing it for the plot, man.

I was not 30.

I think I was, like, 10.

I can see that.

I mean, like, with Mark and Harold, I'm like, that's what everybody does.

So we're just going to keep rolling.

I.

But I do make my.

So we line up on the stairs.

You had to wait to see it.

Dad had to set up the camera.

Mom had to get her coffee.

Those were the.

The things.

So we.

We keep most of that in my household now.

They have to land up on the stairs.

They're not supposed to go downstairs.

I have to get my coffee.

Well, Rob still does that.

Yeah.

Okay.

Amy still does that.

I believe it.

I don't know about Beck, and I don't know about Brandy lining up my age.

The younger kids came in first because the older kids, you could see their faces above because they were taller than the older kid.

Younger kids.

So it worked out very well.

Pretty smart.

And it's also a good marker of time to see us getting older on the steps.

So I look forward to having this.

Well, dad, thanks for taking the time to talk with me again about this.

Hope we didn't miss anything from the first time.

And if we did, that's just okay, because this is its own thing.

My love of Christmas runs deep, and it's nice to understand and hear a little bit more about where that comes from.

Certainly true.

Very, very, very traditional.

Yeah, but.

But not traditional in a rigid sense.

Like, it's traditional as in we have a lot of traditions.

We have the things that we do.

They tend to line up with, you know, the traditions out there, but they're not rigid or inflexible or performative.

They're for the joy of it.

That's right.

That's right.

Maybe that's why it's so easy.

Yeah.

All right.

Well, thanks for sharing the middle with me today, dad.

All right.