Accidental Tradition

Our first Christmas in this house was when Hannah was one year old. We decided to put up our Christmas tree but only decorate it with lights so that we wouldn't have to worry about her pulling off all the ornaments. This worked well for a few years and kept us from the hasslbe of having to decorate (and later take down) a tree. When Jake was one year old we figured we'd continue with the tradition since he was then of an age to bother the ornaments like Hannah was when she was little. Of course Hannah was now 4 and wanted to decorate the tree. We compromised by only putting paper ornaments that Hannah made, unbreakable ornaments from our collection, and strings of popcorn to decorate the tree. Since then we've gone to full on decorating of the tree with breakable ornaments and everything but the strands of popcorn have remained. Since I'm the one that has to string the popcorn I thought maybe we could get rid of the tradition this year and just do the ornaments but one of the first things Jake asked about decorating the tree was "and we're going to do popcorn too, right?" I guess since he has never known a tree without popcorn (except when he was 3 weeks old) I have committed myself to a lifetime of popcorn stringing. I suppose there are worse traditions I could have gotten myself into.