Diaries I Read:
For several days after we brought home our Christmas tree and B put the lights on it, it just sat there undecorated. The boxes of decorations were out, but for some reason I just didn�t feel like decorating it.
I finally got around to it only because B was becoming increasingly annoyed with the boxes of ornaments lying around the house. Then, once I started pulling out my ornaments and putting them on the tree, I began to really enjoy it.
Of course, I have your traditional Christmas bulb ornaments, and the candy canes and glittery gold ornaments from Crate & Barrel. But the bulk of my ornaments are much more special.
When I was a baby, my mom started a tradition of buying me a Christmas ornament every year. (And I�m a really old lady now, so you can imagine that I have quite a collection.) When I was really young, they were always angels. So I have a bunch of angel Christmas ornaments, all of them marked with the year my mom got them. I don�t really remember actually receiving most of these ornaments, but as they�ve been placed on the Christmas tree year after year, they�ve become familiar to me. As I look at the years engraved or printed on them, I think to myself, �I was four years old when my mom bought this for me,� and I try to think back to what Christmas was like when I was so little.
As I got older, the ornaments had more significance. For example, there�s my absolute favorite ornament, my gymnast ornament. She�s a little figurine in a blue leotard with short blonde hair and her arms up in the �ta-dah� pose. At some point, her left foot got chipped, but I just look at it as an old gymnast�s injury � it makes her more authentic.
Then, I have an ornament of a little animal of some sort (A bear? A raccoon?) dressed in the old-school brown and pink Baskin Robbins uniform just like I wore when I worked there in high school. There�s a reindeer-playing-tennis ornament to commemorate the year I (briefly) took up tennis. There�s a penguin-in-a-red-convertible ornament for the year I got my new red car. There�s a bumble bee with a shopping bag for one Christmas when my mom and I seemed to spend an inordinate number of hours in the mall.
Then, of course, there�s a little calico cat ornament for Rags. There�s a little grey dog in a stocking ornament for Deion. There�s a turtle ornament for my turtle, Chelle.
When I went backpacking around Europe after I graduated from college, I decided to buy Christmas ornaments in each country I visited. There�s the wooden Father Christmas from the cute little Christmas store in Germany. There�s a porcelain bell with green clovers on it from Ireland. There�s an Austrian crystal holly leaf from � where else � Austria. There are two little English guardsmen in the funny hats from London. Because I only see these souvenirs once every year, they never lose their magic. Every time I take them out of their box, I�m taken back to the little shop in Europe where I bought them. I�m reminded of all of the adventures that trip had to offer.
Then there�s the really bad ornaments that I hang on the back of the tree because, while they don�t deserve to be left in the box in the attic, they�re not really the ornaments I want people to see. They include the unicorn ornament that one of my best childhood friends gave me when we were about nine. There�s also the really ugly Wonder Woman ornament my mom got for me in honor of my childhood hero.
Last year, the first year I had my own Christmas tree in my own home with my husband, my mom had to separate out all of my Christmas ornaments from the rest of the family ornaments. Even though that was the purpose all along � that she�d give them to us as we began our own families � I know she hated to part with them. But I am so happy to have them. And now I�m adding onto the collection � I have the ornament with two snowmen holding hands and our wedding date written on it. I have the ornament with Dixie�s Christmas picture in it.
Many people might look at my Christmas tree and think that it�s ugly. It�s true that I don�t stick to just one color or one theme � my tree is a hodgepodge of stuff. But to me, you can�t have a tree decorated completely in silver ornaments, or completely in a seaside theme, and still keep its spirit. It might be prettier than mine, but it just won�t be as cool.
Working at home - Wednesday, Nov. 17, 2004
Toronto - Tuesday, Nov. 16, 2004
On the way to Toronto... - Tuesday, Nov. 09, 2004
A Good Day - Monday, Nov. 08, 2004
Another letter - Thursday, Nov. 04, 2004