Day 7: That Night
Remember when we stayed up through the night
Waiting for the satin northern lights?
We were too young to know
We’d never see them through a window frame of snow
We lay beneath the tree
In the living room, you and me
Looking through boughs at a thousand colored lights
That was our aurora that night...
When I was little, there were a few years where we got our Christmas tree at the very last second--on Christmas Eve. While I love the idea of getting a tree early and enjoying it for the days and weeks leading up to December 25th, there is something very sweet about a Christmas Eve tree. Finding a tree farm that is still open, everyone bundling up to go (because the whole family has to go, right?), finding and voting on the best tree (or at least a Charlie Brown tree that needs a home), the rushing about to find the boxes of ornaments in the attic and the garage, untangling all the lights and decorating with the Christmas music playing just shy of "as loud as possible", and then piling onto the couches to watch one more Christmas movie before bed while the tree shines by the stairs...
Forgive me for waxing a bit nostalgic... but I do love a Christmas Eve tree.
One of those years, after the tree was decorated and sparkling, my family all went to the kitchen to make popcorn and hot chocolate--everyone getting ready to watch either A Christmas Carol or It's a Wonderful Life, and I ran upstairs for blankets and pillows. When I came back down, I found my brother laying under the tree.
It struck me as rather funny, and I laughed as I asked him what he was doing.
"Looking at all the lights," he grinned.
He said I should see them, so seven or eight-year-old me dropped the armful of blankets and pillows and laid down to see what he saw. To this day, silly as it may look, this is still one of my favorite Christmas tree things--looking up through the branches at the lights.
While this is the final snapshot and the final moment in the song, this memory from so many years ago was the beginning of "That Night".
The very last lines were the first written.
All the love,
Brittany