Tues Ten 120809: Christmas Spirits

I’ve been at home for much of the last two days recuperating from some sort of respiratory infection. During my sojourn on the couch, I’ve had the occasion to look pretty closely at our Christmas tree. A lovely sight. I was actually in the bed on Sunday when most of it was being decorated, a very unusual situation since I’m such a celebration and tradition junkie. The tradition of trimming the Christmas tree is pretty big for me, and this weekend it was only eclipsed by my total inability to take a deep breath.

Having now had the opportunity to gaze at the finished product, I’ve seen a few spirits from Christmases past. You can tell a lot about a person by the ornaments on their Christmas tree. Now, I won’t begin to draw any comparisons between tree trimming and Myers-Briggs or anything, but suffice it to say that I saw a lot of myself in some of those ornaments. I thought I’d share for this week’s Tuesday Ten: 10 lovely ghosts.

1. A big orange square–at least that’s what Bug calls it. This big orange construction paper square is turned on it’s side to be a diamond and framed with popsicle sticks with a pipe cleaner hanger. It’s filled with little swirlies and the words “God with us,” all covered with glitter. It was a craft project I did with a bunch of 4-year-old children at Sunday School quite a few years ago. Those kids are high schoolers now. My how time flies! I’ll never forget the wide eyed smiles at the prospect of using glitter, as well as the strained looks of concern from some of the parents. It may have been the first time glitter had played a starring role in Sunday School. But, hey, what’s a Christmas tree without a little glitter? That’s what vacuum cleaners were made for!

2. A Coke can from 1993. Its only qualification as a Christmas tree ornament is the great picture of Santa printed on the side–an odd choice of ornament, I know. The Coke can represents a new beginning and a sense of freedom for me. It was the first Christmas after my divorce from my first husband and the first Christmas I had in my own apartment as a single woman. In a sense, it was my first Christmas tree–at least the first unencumbered by the sense that there had been something just not right in my life. Some college boy added it to my Christmas tree at a party I had that year. I was so thankful for a wide and unique circle of friends who were willing to share the sacred act of tree trimming and Cokes.

3. A Frank Lloyd Wright detail. I bought it on a trip to the Chicago area where I saw Wright’s home and the Robie house. It’s a replica of some pattern from one of the windows or floor inlay or some other exquisite piece of Frank Lloyd Wright’s obsession with the details of the built environment. It reminds me of a time when I was able to stand in some of the best spaces built in the twentieth century, and of a time when I was immersed in buildings and their architects — a place I still find myself every now and then.

4. A reindeer made of clothes pins. It has wiggly eyes and a red pom-pom nose — not an unusual holiday craft. What is unusual is that I received it from a Malaysian graduate student named Wing we knew quite a few years ago. He had visited my house on many occasions and knew of my general Christmas-Crazy tendencies. Before he left Starkville to go home, he brought me a zip lock bag filled with ornaments he’d bought in his short few years in the states. I suppose he wanted them to have a good home, and I think they do.

5. A mother goose book, a parachuting bear and a pajama-clad girl holding a lamb. Yep, these were bought in 2005, 2006 and 2008 at the local ever-correspondent Hallmark shop. I couldn’t resist commemorating the years of my gifts’ births.

6. A shiny blue box with a plastic gold ribbon. It probably came in a package of eight or ten and cost about 89 cents sometime in the 1970s. My mother began my path of being a celebration junkie with her unsquelched ability to make almost any situation celebration-worthy simply by how you pay attention to it. When I was a child she made a production of decorating for Christmas. One of the things she always did in our living room was put a pile of those tiny and shiny multi-colored dime store packages into a little gold and porcelain bowl that normally sat on one of the shelves. There was something about the shine that I just couldn’t resist. She gave me the blue one for my room, which was quite a treasure at the time.

7. A hot pink die with silver dots — as in dice (like craps). I bought the wacky piece on the first of two summers I spent in Las Vegas during my college years. Proof that what happens in Vegas doesn’t necessarily stay there.

8. A large mouth bass in a Santa hat. Yep, it’s kind of funny, especially since it’s tail fin is partially missing due to an unfortunate incident with Buddy the Cat. Before Quiver and I married, I gave it to him atop a tiny lighted Christmas tree decorated with red fishing worms and bobbers–the only Christmas decoration his bachelor abode had seen. It was his first experience with my insistence on Christmas cheer, a reality that still takes some recovery time each year.

9. A yellow glass tear-drop shaped ball – with a red center. You’ve seen them before at your grandmother’s or in some book on nostalgic ornaments. I have absolutely no memories associated with it. I bought it at a junk store in a package of four — two yellow and two pink. The celephane was missing from the yellowed box and it had all the great typefaces and illustrations so common in the 1950s. I simply couldn’t resist the notion that it had led a life of its own on some unknown Christmas tree, and I had to give it new life on mine.

10. FPCCC 2007 written on a red wooden stocking. It was a gift to Little Drummer Boy from one of his classmates a few years ago. It hangs alongside lots of other little inexpensive ornaments like holiday bookmarks, ribbon ornaments with names on them and cross-stitched bells that were gifts to me from classmates when I was a child. I guess some traditions just come naturally.

O Christmas Tree.