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Our family has a tradition of decorating for Christmas during Thanksgiving weekend. We’ve been doing this for many years, finding the four-day weekend a perfect time to work on the extra chores of hanging lights and setting up the Christmas tree.

By the time Thanksgiving rolled around this year, however, all of us in my family were battling what the doctor referred to as the “Greensboro Crud.” We would no more wake up before we’d want to just go back to bed to take a nap. I remember resigning to the fact that our decorations would not be going up that particular weekend as everyone felt pretty miserable. We tentatively put off the decorating until the next weekend in hopes we all felt good enough to enjoy it by then.

A few days before the following weekend arrived, my daughter Hannah and I took an afternoon to scout out tree lots to see if any of them had any ball root Christmas trees like we’ve bought in the past. A ball root tree has its roots tied up with burlap and rope so it can be planted after the holidays.

At first our search was unsuccessful. The place we usually have bought them still did not have any for sale or had sold the precious few they trucked in already before we got there. We decided to try one more place near our house and found exactly what we were looking for. We made the split-second decision to buy the tree rather than waiting until the weekend.

My daughter and I got the tree home and decided we’d try, just us girls, to get the tree and all its roots out of the trunk of the car. It took us some time to figure out the right configuration of how to hold it where both of us had a good grip on it to lift it. As soon as it hit the pavement, both of us did a high five and shouted “girl power” to the wind. We impressed ourselves with our strength and ability.

We pulled the tree over into the yard. We figured that my son, Christopher, could help us get it onto the porch after he got home from work, which he did. Both he and my husband got the tree inside after that and into the galvanized wash tub it would sit in throughout the season while it was inside the house. Excited and exhausted, we made plans to try to at least get the lights on it the next day so it would be ready to decorate on Saturday.

Plans for Saturday involved my husband mowing one last time for the season, preferably before any of the forecasted snow fell later in the day. In reality, the yard didn’t get mowed before the snow started. I joked to my husband that he could do something he has never done before by mowing in the snow, but he just laughed at me before we moved on to decorating the tree.

With snow falling outside, we all went into the living room and opened the mini-blinds so we could watch it snow as we decorated the tree. The snow lightened the chore of decorating for the holidays and made it feel even more like Christmas than it usually does. One by one, we hung ornaments, taking time every now and then to look outside at the beautiful falling snow.

I have never decorated for Christmas in the snow. Had we felt well enough to follow our tradition, I would have missed out on the opportunity to do so while enjoying winter at its finest moment. I was glad my daughter and I had already bought the tree. Everything just seemed to come together perfectly as if it were meant to be this way this year.

The holidays are so often packed with so many traditions and expectations. We can easily be let down when our excitement doesn’t match reality, so much so that we miss the surprise blessing in what God has for us instead. In our case, our traditional time of Thanksgiving-weekend decorating that we were not up for was replaced by a picture-perfect weekend spent decorating for Christmas time in the snow.

I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.

Linda Vestal is a wife, mother, daughter, sister and friend living in Gibsonville. Contact her with comments or story ideas at lindavestal@triad.rr.com.