It was a week before Christmas we hadn’t put up any decor at all because we didn’t have any! We were a brand new married couple,with a one year old and our jobs weren’t great. I had been stressing all week about trying to make this Christmas a special one for my family, but how all my money went to bills. So I asked for extra hours but the boss said no, I tried everything nothing was working. I told my wife we can only buy our son a couple presents and that that doesn’t include the Christmas tree! She asked,”Not even a Christmas tree?” With pain in her eyes. I said sadly,”no.”
I went to work the next day thinking about how to get a tree for my wife and son until my friend came up and asked me, “can you help me this weekend with planting some orange trees, I’ll pay you.” I replied,”Yeah sure I need the money.”
So I went to his house helped him plant the orange trees and waited for my pay, he came to me with a weird look on his face he said he couldn’t pay me, that his bank messed up his account. I replied,”What! I needed that money!”
He went to the back of his truck and pulled out a baby orange tree and said,”Here, take this tree it’s all I can do right now.” I thought, what am I gonna do with this, so I went home with this tiny orange tree and some old family tree decorations I found in storage. My wife asked about it and I told her what happened.
Christmas Eve came around and my wife and I started arguing about not having money or even a tree. While we were arguing, my one year old was crawling around and playing with the decorations I got out of storage. We stopped arguing to watch him. Then all the sudden he crawled over to that tiny orange tree and threw the decorations at it, that’s when my wife and I got an idea, our baby was telling us something! We could decorate the orange tree for Christmas. So we got those old ornaments and threw them on there!
Although we can afford Christmas trees now, our true family tradition is still decorating a tiny orange tree. It always reminds us we don’t need Christmas decor or fancy presents, just our family is enough.
