Every tree tells a tale... and every ornament

I favor the sentimental, eclectic school of Christmas tree decorating.

Someone in a book I once read was thrilled when a visitor told her that her Christmas tree looked like it belonged in a department store. I guess that means the colors and shapes were all coordinated. Personally, I would hate to have a tree like that at home.

No danger of that. The ornaments on our tree span decades of ornament styles (not a full century, as far as I know) and were not chosen with any color scheme in mind. They do, however, have a lot of stories to go with them. And even the ones that don’t actually have stories, often suggest stories.

One of the oldest came from my father’s parents’ tree—a clear, red glass ball. My father told me that during the war, they didn’t sell silvered ornaments because they were saving metals for the war. At some point, he tried to make one of clear red balls shiny by putting scrunched aluminum foil in it. It didn’t really work.

Other ornaments of indeterminate age came from Tom’s parents—a lot of baubles of interesting colors (pink, lime, peach) as well as some odd shapes. Though age is slowly taking away some of their shine, they add some interest to the red, green, blue, gold, silver of our more recent baubles.

There are ornaments that I remember choosing with my brother when we were young. He got Mrs. Santa and an angel on a sled (long gone now), while I chose an angel on a horse and a pink bell. We used some of those to mark out our places under the tree, and later on there were ornaments to stand for other people: a skier for my father, an angel on a piano (of course) for my mother.

Some ornaments came as gifts—or attached to gifts. When M was a baby, relatives gave us an elf. Though I hear elves tend to roam about most people’s houses in December, ours likes to take up a spot on the tree and stay there the whole time. And when Tom and I decorated a tree together for the first time (which is when we got a lot of the more recent colored balls as well as the clear “soap bubbles”), I gave him a silvery wire tree ornament.

We keep picking up ornaments here and there. There’s a Moravian star from Old Salem, a gourd decorated like a cat from a museum gift shop, an owl I found when visiting a friend in Indianapolis, a scrollwork penguin from the State Fair, and quite a variety from Holden Beach.

With all these ornaments, we have new problem. We have more ornaments than tree. The most favored ornaments are guaranteed a spot, but the rest just have to hope that this is their year. If not, well, there’s always next year.

Till next post.