On the way home today, I followed a van with a Virginia pine tree strapped firmly to the top. It’s almost the first of December, and Christmas is right around the corner.

Some people start decorating for Christmas as soon as the cornbread dressing is packed away in the fridge. These on-the-ball folks head to the closest Christmas tree lot and get their pick of the trees.

These are probably the same people who decorate every room in their house for the holidays. They replace the beige hand towels in the bathroom with green and red candy cane towels, switch out the plastic soap dispenser with a Frosty the Snowman one and wrap artificial garland around everything in the house.

I’m not one of those people.

We get our Christmas tree right before they go on sale for half price, not because I’m cheap but because I keep thinking the weekend after Thanksgiving is too early.

Then I spend the next three weeks trying to decide what to get everybody and then it’s five days before Christmas. By that time, the lot contains mostly four-foot tall trees Charlie Brown would walk past.

I like putting the lights on the tree, but I always forget to measure the distance between the plug and the outlet. I try and untangle the lights from the branches so I can rehang them with enough of the cord hanging out, but I usually just end up shoving the tree closer to the wall.

I’ve had a fully-decorated tree fall over in the middle of the night, and thought for sure someone had broken in and was trying to steal our presents. Luckily the boys were young then, and I managed to get the tree back up and the broken ornaments swept up before they woke up.

There was the year my husband was out of town, and I roped my 8-year-old into helping me put up the tree. He told me the whole time I wasn’t doing it right.

“There’s not enough of the trunk in the stand,” he said. “It’s going to fall over.”

“Nonsense,” I replied. “Your dad always cuts off too many of the limbs, so I’m going to do it right this year when he’s not here.”

A few hours later, I noticed the ornaments were hanging at an angle and, sure enough, the tree was leaning forward. I got my kid out of bed and told him to hold the tree while I sawed off the bottom limbs and could shove the trunk down deeper in the stand.

“I told you,” he muttered the whole time.

“Be quiet or Santa will hear you,” I told him, hoping Santa wasn’t blaming me.

Each year, I’m tempted to buy fancy ornaments, but I’d much rather have the sentimental mis-matched ornaments we’ve hung on the tree for years.

There’s the obligatory macaroni stars our sons made when they were in kindergarten. They’re a little yellowed and somewhat brittle, but they’re all going on the tree.

Some of my favorites are the hand-made wooden ornaments crafted from the bottom of the boys’ first Christmas tree. I painted their names on the wooden disc, and those rustic ornaments have hung on the tree every year since they were born.

I have the ornament I bought with my first paycheck when I was 18 years old. That little plastic angel is a reminder of how proud I was to be able to pay for something with my own money.

Over 50 years later, I’m still proud of that little angel, even though, like me, she’s frayed around the edges and her colors are faded. As long as I’m decorating the tree, she’ll be hung on the branch with care.

It doesn’t matter if one’s Christmas tree is blinged out in matching glass ornaments or adorned with construction-paper chains and pipe-cleaner candy canes.

It doesn’t matter whether you get your tree by the second of December or five days before Santa’s coming down the chimney.

As long as you make new memories every year, the spirit of Christmas will stay alive and well in your home and that’s all that counts.

This article was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.