I’ve learned two lessons with this holiday season issue. First, I’m old. Somewhere along the way I lost my grip on current requirements of being hip and fresh, and became an old fogie in the eyes of today’s young adults. If I can remember when they were born, by default, I’m out-dated.

This month, in cooperation with Miss Shelly Allen, an English teacher at Lewis County High School, we are launching a new column that includes multiple contributors -- the students of Miss Allen’s Creative Writing class. These students have been receiving monthly copies of Two-Lane Livin’ so far during the school year and, (although many of them think the magazine is about as exciting as a text book) will be contributing their thoughts on a monthly assigned topic for inclusion in our publication.

For their first topic, they were asked to review all media outlets of Two-Lane Livin’ -- print, web site, facebook group, twitter posts, etc. -- and provide their thoughts on its appeal (or lack thereof) to their generation, and suggest options for reaching them and capturing their interest.

Their responses are included on page 17. Alas, even the new things I’m learning about social media is "old hat" to them. To them, you’re nobody if you don’t have a MySpace page. In reading their responses, I realized, I’m no longer cool, and I’m too old to keep up. Thank goodness age has given the wisdom to realize that I don’t have to. You couldn’t pay me to go through my teen years again.

One thing Christmas will teach us though is that we are all young at heart. That’s the second lesson I learned this season. I might be old (oh, how it pains me to admit it), but that doesn’t mean I’m beyond having fun, or getting excited, or enjoying a bout of childish behavior. Sometimes, I think that the secret of life is to remember to HAVE a life.

Christmas isn’t a huge affair at our home, but I have adopted two rather time-consuming traditions: the Christmas tree, and Christmas cards. These may not be time-consuming for some people, but I -- well, I tend to overdo it a little.

See, I buy Christmas cards after Christmas each year, when they’re on sale. After doing this for several years, then finding a great deal on several brand-new boxes at a yard sale, I now have an entire dresser drawer full of Christmas cards. I also have a multitude of addresses in my address book. I have fine-point red and green felt-tip markers I use, and I address them in my best penmanship. It’s a science. I have a system.

I also have a system for decorating the Christmas tree. See, in my opinion, a Christmas tree is a work of art. A temporarily displayed piece of light and dark, balance and beauty, foreground and back ground. Even with the same ornaments every year and an artificial tree, no Christmas tree is ever the same. The lights may go on differently. Different pieces may be front-featured. Some pieces may have broken. Or branches may have broken. A Christmas tree is a work of art, to be decorated with an eye for light and color.

So, when I decide to pull out the Christmas tree and the cards, I have week long projects set out before me.

For years, Frank and I have had a 3-sided artificial tree. A beautiful, realistic blue spruce hand-me-down from my mother, it worked for us. I just had to put the side with the broken branches next to the wall. When decorated, you never knew it was three sided.

But this year, there was a Great Christmas Tree Exchange in my family. My mother moved, and my sister moved, both to smaller homes. My mother in Ohio didn’t have storage room for her medium-sized tree, so hers went to my sister in Virginia. My sister no longer had room for her large-size tree, and it came to my house here in West Virginia.

So this year, I have a bigger tree to decorate. And not only that, it came with lights already in it, and it ROTATES. I must admit, working on this December issue before Thanksgiving has made me curioser and curiouser about that tree - which I had to dig out of the box just to see.

Imagine - a tree with four sides that all show! A pre-lit tree than I can still add more lights to! See, I can watch a Christmas tree like people watch television. Twinkles, flashes, glitter - it’s mesmerizing to me.

My Christmas tree and Christmas cards give me joy. Red and green ink, lights and baubles, neither of these holiday traditions seems like a chore to me. They give me joy, and that is why they have become traditions in my home.

Why, of all the Christmas traditions did I adopt these two, and why do I approach them so emotionally? Because they are tied to memories -- a connection to my youth.

When I was growing up, my mother taped Christmas cards sent to us around a door frame, where each card front was on display, and could be opened to reveal the sender’s name. It was common for me to pass them on occasion, and look who sent the ones that caught my eye. Some were from neighbors, from family, from friends. Some were from my mother’s former students, or my father’s business clients or associates.

Today, I realize, each name in our address book is a person - someone with whom I have shared time, and share memories. Even if I haven’t seen them in years, for the time it takes to sign and address a card, I’m thinking of them fondly. I know this when I receive a Christmas card too. I know, even if only for a few seconds, that person had me on their mind.

When I was growing up, I also learned the science of decorating a Christmas tree. When we were young children, we once had two trees. Downstairs, there was the kid’s tree, the one with our home-made ornaments and paper chains. Upstairs was Mother’s themed tree. Once it was all blue and white lights and ornaments, another time it was bows. One year, it had lots of birds, and at one point, it became all angels. The Angel Tree. It was my Mother who taught me that similar ornaments don’t go next to each other, and that icicles go on last - one at a time.

But that’s back when icicles were aluminum and lead, not plastic. The plastic icicles just aren’t the same. In fact, I remember the days when we would lament, "why can’t someone invent a tree that already has the lights on it?" Sigh. I guess I’m telling my age.

In many ways, our ornament collection today is the same as the addresses in our address book. Each one is a memory. Many are hand-me-downs, remnants of Mother’s themes past. Some were gifts from friends who died too young, and others were souvenirs from a vacation or special moment in life. Hanging each one is a flash, a memory, of faces and places and Christmases past.

You see, my age has made me rich with memories, and these memories are my connection to my youth. These memories, and hearing from today’s youth, have reminded me, at my age, what it was like to be young.

These days, Christmas greetings are sent as virtual gifts on MySpace, as swift text messages and colorful e-mails. My Christmas Card tradition is referred to as "snail mail." Trees come with lights already in them, and ornaments and decorations are (hopefully) tested for lead. Photo ornaments will change the pictures they feature, while other ornaments will sing, flash or dance. It truly is a different world.

I am both curious and nervous to hear what teens today think of our world, of our traditions, of our future. I wonder what traditions they will adopt for themselves and I am excited to have Miss Allen’s Lewis County High School Creative Writing Class participate and share with us. For truly, it is their world we’re living in, and in what will seem like no time at all, our world will come to their generation’s care.

~ Lisa