Wacky Traditions!

My friend Bill Shearouse loves tradition. He keeps them religiously and is frustrated when they are interrupted. I celebrate a great many of the same traditions that Bill does and we do so together. University of Georgia football, the Hibernian Society on St. Patrick's Day, lunch with the boys, and a thousand other things. He loves tradition and I love him loving them.

So this morning on my Thanksgiving Day jog down the beach (I may as well have jogged, the power was out on island and no one was doing anything else, including cooking the turkey) I was on the look out for a Tybee Island tradition. Every year around this time, someone goes down to the beach, finds a tree that has washed up on shore, and they plant it in the sand. It is always a majestic sight! A barren winter beach with a dead tree defying death and standing proud towering above the ocean. It is certainly something that you don't see every day.

Then this wacky tradition takes place. Over the ensuing weeks, people decorate the dead tree with Christmas ornaments. The naked branches become filled with shinny balls, tinsel, stars, and a host of other decorations. The tree remains until the days after Christmas and then either the ocean takes it or the person who planted it returns to take it down. I prefer to believe that the fish of the sea celebrate their holiday a couple of days after the rest of us and are waiting on the tree.

Anyway, it is one of the things that I love about living on Tybee. A dead tree springs to life and people notice it and celebrate it. One Christmas morning I jogged by the decorated tree and a man wearing a kilt played "Amazing Grace" on bagpipes standing next to the tree.

Holidays just do not get any better than that. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!