A Christmas Story...

It was our very first Christmas in the Philippines. My family had always had a little “Charlie Brown” tree in the states. For our first Christmas in the Philippines, Daddy had bought a big artificial Christmas tree. (There are no real trees in the Philippines). My mom wanted a lot of lights, so we bought some cheap lights from the department store and wrapped our tree with them. On Christmas Eve, we left the lights on all day. Toward evening, us kids and Grandma were outside. Grandma came to be with us our first Christmas away from the U.S. Suddenly, Grandma smelled smoke. So she followed the smell of smoke and headed inside. The living room was filled with smoke. Then she saw it! The Christmas tree was on fire! She started yelling “FIRE! FIRE!”. My dad ran for some water to put the flame out. Us kids arrived just in time to see Daddy pour some water over the tree and douse the flamesJ Needless to say our presents that year had little black holes in the wrapping paper. (And they all were a little wetJ) We saved that Christmas tree and still used it for years after that happened. We just positioned the tree so that the burnt part would be at the backJ. Dad had bought a whole bunch of sparklers to make our Christmas special, but after the tree fire, us kids were afraid of the fireworks. J

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