He first felt it in Mitchell, his home town, where the domed Corn Palace was decorated each year with murals made from corn, seeds and grass, the bounty of the plains.
The children came home to choose among those belongings -- like a grandmother's red marble table, a great-grandparent's china set and even a small ceramic Christmas tree that the family decorated each year with gumdrops.
But women in Boalsburg, Pa., which has a claim as the holiday's birthplace, began decorating graves each year as early as October 1864.
A few evergreens are decorated with multi-colored lights, and in Elmwood Park the city cooperates with Regional Hospice of Western Connecticut to decorate a tree each year that is called the Tree of Hope.
As I decorate my tree each year now, I miss who I believed mine was, back when my eyes were a little brighter -- when my grandmother summoned us to her over-the-top Christmases each year, and we all came because it felt Merry, just to be together.
Nearly a million people, many on horseback or in decorated wagons, take part each year in the high-spirited pilgrimage, Spain's largest.
Even though our home is decorated with holiday spirit each year, and we exchange gifts on Christmas morning following a family dinner that some member of our family will invariably host the night before, we do not mark the holiday with any religious undertone.
Until recently, in Wenzhou, hundreds of crosses decorated church roofs.This year, however, more than 230 have been classed as "illegal structures" and removed.
After a decorated 17 years of playing elite netball, Bianca Chatfield has called time on her career.
These days, the sparsely decorated 60-year-old club attracts young musicians, many of them attached to its jazz school.
Officer Conway is a model cop, a highly decorated 13-year veteran skilled in taking guns off the street".
