I’d been putting up live Christmas trees with all of the trimmings since I was in my late teens. I never once had one fall. Now, in our first blended family Christmas together – when we really need a great Christmas – we have this happen. Was it an omen for our life ahead together?

Our first Christmas as a blended family was memorable for so many reasons. Having merged seven people into one home after our October wedding, we were eager to share the Christmas season together.

The Saturday after Thanksgiving Gina and I braved the basement storage room in search of our collective holiday decorations. We stared up in awe in the cramped dimly lit space as we took in the sight of more than 25 boxes of cardboard and plastic boxes all marked “Christmas”.

Our five kids, still at those great ages where Christmas was indeed the most wonderful time of the year, saw the boxes and insisted we open each one. As we did, the decision to use or not use each decoration became life or death to the kids. Ultimately, with a combination of guilt and seasonal joy, we acquiesced and out came decorations and mementos from two lifetimes.

You must remember, Gina and her late husband Matt was married for 13 years. My late wife Cathy and I were married for more than 12. We had some stuff! Ultimately out came, four advent calendars, three manger scenes, 28 strands of tree lights and a combined Christmas Village that had more structures than the Detroit metropolitan area.

Gina and our daughter Charlotte organized the boxes (and boxes!) of ornaments and lights while the four boys and I struggled to secure our freshly cut 9-foot blue spruce tree into the tree stand in our living room. The kids spent hours joyfully placing every single ornament from every single box onto our first “new family” tree. It seemed so important to them to tell their story of where each ornament came from.

“Remember? Grandma gave us this one right after Danny was born. Remember?”

When they were finished we turned out all of the house lights and turned on the tree lights. What a sight! Every square inch of the tree was covered. Ornaments, garland, lights, candy canes…

After a few moments it was time to go into the TV room to watch one of our favorite holiday classics, It’s a Wonderful Life. We all settled in with popcorn and hot chocolate to what we thought would be two hours of uninterrupted family movie night. However just about the time ZuZu lost her petals, we heard the worst noise form the living room. CRASH!

We all ran into the living room to see what happened. There, lying on its side, broken lights and ornaments all around it, was our newly decorated Christmas tree. I quickly surveyed the scene, looking for threats of fire and jagged chards of glass. Finally, we all moved closer and took it all in. Many of our most precious holiday mementos lay broken in a million pieces on the floor. What had been a joyful night of Christmas fun had turned unbelievably sad. I’d been putting up live Christmas trees with all of the trimmings since I was in my late teens. I never once had one fall. Now, in our first blended family Christmas together – when we really need a great Christmas – we have this happen. Was it an omen for our life ahead together?

Eventually Gina and I put the kids back in front of the movie. (Jimmy Stewart was just about to lose everything and think about suicide so we didn’t want them to miss that!) The two of us lifted the tree back into place. I felt horribly guilty for having failed to adequately secured the tree in its stand. Together we saw that not as many ornaments were broken as we first thought. So we cleaned up the broken glass and other mess, rehung all of the remaining decorations, made doubly sure the tree was stable, and then rejoined our kids in the TV room.

Not 30 minutes later we heard it again. CRASH! Gina and I looked at each other and could not believe what was happening. It fell again! This time even more of the decorations were broken.

“I know this isn’t your fault, Gina said. “We both tied this tree down securely.”

As we reset our disheveled tree for the second time, and surveyed the damage all around us, something occurred to me.

“We have too much weight on this tree,” I said. “We tried to put too many decorations on it. It just can’t handle that many all at once.”

No one could blame us I suppose. It was our first year together and the kids, and Gina and I, were all figuring out this thing called “our new family”. While trying to honor our past lives and remember what we’d had as separate families, we over-decorated to the point of collapsing an innocent Christmas tree not once but twice! And in those collapses, lay dozens of special mementos, crushed into pieces.

We do that. Blended families of all size and shape are right now figuring out their new holiday traditions. Aunts and uncles, friends and neighbors are all looking at them for guidance as to how it will go. Children especially will look not so much for Santa’s sleigh this year but for gentle leadership from their parents as to how to “do Christmas”, now that we’re a new family.

Remembering and honoring the families that came before this new one, is vital. However it’s just as important to look forward, without loading your family with “too many ornaments” from the past. Look for ways to honor that past without allowing it to collapse the trees you’re trying to decorate this year, and next.

When Gina and I finally got our tree upright again (and bolted to the floor!), we realized that many of the old decorations needed to go back into the boxes. Some stayed of course, but others were carefully wrapped up and kept safe for another time. There were new decorations to put out, and new traditions to create.