For me, the Christmas season is about memories, not religion. We have a Christmas tree because the lights and decorations and the faint scent of pine are beautiful and peaceful. I’ve often thought of growing a Christmas tree in our back yard and keeping it decorated year around. Fat chance of that in south Florida. We have the tree up for about three weeks, longer if the needles are still green.
Every year, I eagerly climb the ladder to the attic for the boxes of Christmas decorations. And in these boxes are some real treasure, ornaments that have been in our family for decades, ornaments with memories attached to them.
This little Santa Claus, in fact, holds some of my earliest memories. The Christmas before my sister was born, we were living in Maracaibo, in what was then known as an “oil camp,” where employees of Exxon were housed. Mr. Clause, I recall, hung from a low branch and my grandmother – my mother’s mother – moved him to a higher branch. She was visiting from Oklahoma because she was going to help out once my sister was born in January. She was Russian born, in Odessa, I think, and for some reason thought that Mr. Clause belonged higher up on the tree, maybe so our dog couldn’t eat him. Through this ornament, I recall how pregnant and beautiful my mother was, and how sure I felt that the baby was a girl, my sister.
Somewhere on our tree is an ornament bought around the time my dad decided the political situation in Venezuela was deteriorating so fast that it was time to leave. Next to that ornament is a violin – or a fiddle ?- that I inherited from my first editor, Chris Cox, after he died from AIDS.
It turned out that Chris, like me, collected unusual ornaments in his travels. Shortly after his death in the early 1990s, a package arrived filled with his Christmas ornaments. I’m not sure who sent them – his sister, his fellow editor, Cheryl Woodruff, or his angel of mercy and close friend, Susan Sarandon, who paid for Chris’s private nursing care in his final days.
One ornament is a picture of Jessie, the Golden Retriever who was with us for eleven years, and another is of Megan, when she was three or four. There are a number of frog ornaments given to us by friends or family who know how much we like frogs or that I bought because they were so irresistible.
Here and there are impersonal ornaments, fillers that aren’t attached to any emotion or memory. Their home is at the back of the tree, so the wall won’t be lonely.
Every year when I open that container with the ornaments and the lights, icicles from the previous year still threaded through the wires, a peaceful nostalgia claims me. I touch the special ornaments, the ones connected to memories of people, and am grateful those people have graced my life. These ornaments have changed my feelings about that word. Ornaments aren’t just the superficiality of who we are. Sometimes, they are the very core of who we are.
Happy holidays to all! May 2012 bring you health, happiness, prosperity- and many ornaments that hold important memories.
In the house we lived in before my parents moved to where they are now (that old house was off of Le Chalet, so not far), my Dad bought a Christmas Tree with roots. Not sure where he bought it. But we had it in our living room and decorated it. It was our first Christmas Tree in that house. He planted it in the front yard and there it stayed for many years, growing tall, until the people that moved in later chopped it down. So, maybe you could plant a year-round Christmas Tree!
How did he get a rooted tree? Very cool!
No idea, I was six years old I think…Oh my god SOOO long ago now that I think about it! I will definitely ask him!
Speaking of opera music.
I was looking at Whitley Strieber’s blog and read this post;
https://www.unknowncountry.com/journal/christmas-2011
” I sit listening to Rachmaninoff’s Vocalise sung by Anna Moffo, which I would listen to on nights when I felt that the visitors were coming. They would cast such a spell over me on those nights, with their strangeness and their longing. They seemed far from home, but not physically; rather, from a home that is deep in the heart. They were seekers, looking for something they had lost, which was why, after my initial disquiet, I felt such a closeness to them.”
I have never heard of Rachmaninoff’s Vocalise.Although I am familiar with his music.
I’ve sat two rows back while David Helfgott
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117631/
(see the great movie “Shine” to know who I’m writing about here)
https://www.davidhelfgott.com/
played Rachmaninoff from memory.
I’ll never forget that afternoon,and it was only after seeing that movie that made me want to listen to Rachmaninoff’s music.
But Rachmaninoff’s Vocalise is something else again.
Thank you Whitley for bringing this beautiful music into my life,not to mention that wonderful Xmas greeting of your’s – “Have joy”.
Have joy over the holidays,everyone.-)
New journal entry! I’ll have to take a look.
Thanks for the links, will check then out. I love that kangaroo post of yours!
Re:
“the kangaroo post”.
I’ll go up my street and take pictures of the other poles to give you a better idea of what other painted poles look like.
Weather permitting,that is.
I know the next one up from my house is a owl,but I’m not sure what the others are.
It’s a cool idea to paint telephone poles with pictures.
My favorite ornament is one made of dough that Jen made one year in her likeness. It is so cute – it has a pony on the top of its head, just the way she wore her hair when she was six or seven. Then there are the wooden clothes pins made into the likeness of butterflies that my younger daughter made. All precious.
We have an artificial Christmas Tree but it is 50+ years old and originally belonged to my parents who passed it on to me. The family tease me about the tree and are always asking when I’m are going to get a new one or a ‘real’ tree. But I reckon it will last a few more years yet, as it contains memories similar to those you write about. Though I did succumb to some new lights this year.
Just putting the tree together – every branch has to be pushed into the main stem – releases the flow of memories, and all of them of good times.
Hope you had a wonderful day.
Great story Trish.
I think ornaments are a very important part of our lives.
My bookshelves are filled with them.I see them as external memories,something like a note you would write to yourself on a post-it note,so you won’t lose the thought in your memory abyss.
Many times when I look through my bookcase and see certain ornaments it brings the memory to the surface of just why I bought it and the memories surrounding buying it.
Strangers looking at my ornaments might think that they look nice or interesting,but without my memories to interpret the meanings of each,they would have no clue as to what they all mean to me.Only I would know,because the ornaments are like I have taken a memory from my mind and left it on display on my shelves.They would need my mind to unlock what they mean…and sometimes I only half know myself.
I think that a big reason why souvenirs are so important for holiday makers and travelers,is because they are a touch-stone to recall precious memories of the trip that otherwise might be forgotten in the fog of time.
I’m not big into Christmas,but I do feel it is an important ritual for many people on this planet,and we do have a plastic Christmas tree up every year,filled with ornaments…some special,others just decorations.
And I think there is where the important difference lay.
Ornaments to quote this source;
…are a useful accessory,something that lends grace (or beauty), one whose virtues or graces add luster to a place or society;
graced, grac·ing, grac·es
1. To honor or favor: “You grace our table with your presence”.
2. To give beauty, elegance, or charm to.
3. Music To embellish with grace notes.
And oddly enough harking back to your violin ornament.In music an ornament can be – : an embellishing note not belonging to the essential harmony or melody —called also embellishment, fioritura. “Fioritura” is the name given to the flowery, embellished vocal line found in many arias from nineteenth-century opera. It is derived from the Italian fiore, meaning “flower”.
Whereas a decoration (in my book anyway) is more something that adorns, enriches, or beautifies just for the sake of it,like a candy cane or angel.
Anyway,Merry Christmas to you all.
Didn’t know that about the vocal line in arias! Thanks for the info, Daz!
such a beautiful story and one i particularly relate to for all the same reasons as you – each year i give as a “gift” an ornament to each of my children and now to their children and their children – and hope they will each in turn cherish the giving and the thought behind the giving – but especially the moments in time surrounding each little momento over time – all those moments that did – and do – help form our individual spirit – here’s to all those little things that mean so much – your words and thoughts being no small part of all that in the lives of your readers, followers and friends, dear macgregors! merry merry and more to come!
Sounds like a worthy tradition, Gypsy.
I don’t have a Christmas tree, but I do remember the ornaments on the trees of my childhood. My other siblings all inherited them because they do trees. But if I had some like these, I might change my mind. Lovely tradition you have here, and I do love that sweet violin!