Our house will be 100 years old this year, and for decades now, every Christmas, it looks like this. Our home used to be my grandparents’ home, to whom I was very close, especially my grandma, so carrying on the tradition of decorating it for Christmas like she always did is very special to me, and I’m sure they would love to know we continue to this day.
On the exterior of the house, we have 13 wreaths, 16 eight-foot garlands and 18 red bows. We decorate in mid-November when it’s not too cold, as it is much harder to put everything up with mittens on. Our family
tradition is to attend a Remembrance Day service on the morning of November 11th and then spend the afternoon setting up together. We have a pretty good system now since we’ve been doing it for so long; many of those years were spent decorating alongside my grandparents.
We don’t have many lights, just one strand with white bulbs and some spotlights shining on the house, but people love to drive by and see because it’s so different from the other places around here. (It seems rare in
Manitoba to see decorated houses as most people do big light displays with music instead.)
While my grandparents were alive, they had gone for breakfast one morning at a local restaurant and at the cash register, they saw Christmas greeting cards with our house painted on the front — they were never asked permission. Still, my grandma did purchase one of those greeting cards, which I framed and put up every
Christmas season.
