Armenian Christmas has passed and it is now the time to pack up all of the decorations in the house.  Christmas is a major holiday here at the house.  The decorating is done the weekend after Thanksgiving and after carrying the thirty to forty cartons up from the basement, the enjoyment of wine is a great compensation.  We start so early, because the first Friday of December is the time honored date for my Bride’s “Ladies Party.”   So as I was taking down all of the decorations and finding the proper box to pack them away for another year, I took a moment to look at a couple of the decorations that I thought were germane to this blog.

I have to mention that our Christmas tree is not one that would be in any of the glossy rotogravure sections of a newspaper or a periodical.  The majority of the ornaments on the tree have significant memories to us.  There are ornaments honoring children and grandchildren, and then there are silly inside jokes that only we would understand, and then there are ornaments for other family members as well.  My Bride is quite zealous about Christmas and the decorations, to the point where she almost has to hide the new decorations from me, as I complain that there is not enough space in the “closet” that I have created just to house the Christmas decorations.  The first ornament that I will mention is a bulb that features us on our Wedding, and as I look at it again, I have to question who that thin fellow is in the tuxedo next to my Bride.

The next ornament is a fun item and it commemorates the actual building of our wine cellar.  For a while I just had racks and cartons in a section of the basement, until I could actually design and build the cellar.  I have to admit that I am proud of the job that I did, though I wish that I had a little more room, but that is hindsight.  I thought that space for eight hundred bottles would suffice, silly me, as there is probably about twelve hundred bottles resting there at the moment.

The last ornament is kind of a whimsical ornament, with a made up word on it.  It says “Winoseur” and I am not sure if it is a little dig that I am a wino, as I certainly do not consider myself a connoisseur.  If the word was “winosaur” I could say that I am an old dinosaur of wine stories, but hardly an expert, as I still consider myself a student of the wines.  My work for the holidays is over, as I enjoy a glass of wine and ponder where my thoughts will take me next.  I thank you all for your indulgence.