1970
It’s four days before Christmas, and my father finally retrieves from beneath the cellar stairs the huge Sears box that houses our Christmas tree. The tree is heavy, its metal trunk solid and plumed with thick branches trimmed with rough-cut green cellophane that simulates pine needles.
It’s the only Christmas tree I’ve ever known, and when my father wrestles it upright and folds its heavy wire branches down, one by one, it’s as magical to me as a butterfly unfurling new wings. He gets pinched once or twice by the boughs as he tugs them into place. “Goddamit,” he says under his breath, to no one in particular.
Then comes the endless detangling of lights (“Goddamit!!”), and my favorite part: the box of ornaments. Most of our Christmas tree ornaments are flimsy or plastic—cheap molded candy canes painted with red, uneven stripes; cardboard stars dipped in white glue and glitter; small plastic elves trimmed sloppily with felt, their faces painted by someone who slap-dashed their eyes on, completely askew from the divot meant to replicate a tiny plastic eye socket. But I love them all.
What I love best, though, are the few fragile glass balls that predate me and are carefully hung in a place of honor on the tree, high up in front. They aren’t particularly fancy, but they are beautiful in the eyes of a 6-year-old. My favorite is a fat little ball with a pointed tip, painted with a picture of a small white snowman holding what looks like a palm tree, but which I later realize is supposed to be a broom.
I don’t really fully know the story of the handful of painted glass ornaments on our tree—and I still don’t. They might have been purchased by my parents as newlyweds, or possibly they once hung on a tree at my grandparents’ house. But those years, they add import and sophistication to our metal tree, erected in the basement rec room. We aren’t a family prone to cultural or ethnic traditions: Like many of their generation, my parents have fully embraced the conveniences of the suburban New World and cast off the Old. But, still, our Christmas has the ornaments, and I associate them in a murky, unfocused way with all that is rich and good about family history, and ritual, and tradition.
1973
I am invited to my friend Heidi’s house for a Christmas party. Heidi’s mother is German. She swings open the door just as we hit the top step, at the threshold, and as we pass through… her meaty arms swing heavily, like hams in a butcher shop, over our heads. “Velcome! Velcome, children!” she says.
Heidi’s mother serves a kind of sweet bread I now know was stollen. It’s doughy and lemony and studded with fat raisins, and I can’t get enough of it. The bread was home-made, Heidi tells me, a point which I think confusing, because to me “home-made” is a package of brown-and-serve dinner rolls served heated in the oven, and I had never seen anything close to this braided bread in the pre-baked bakery aisle at the supermarket.
Heidi’s Christmas tree isn’t a tight cone like our perfect metal tree, I notice. Instead, it’s a real tree, messy and shapeless, with drooping boughs that shed needles on the carpet. Real candles are clipped to it, here and there, and though I’m old enough to wonder whether that’s safe… I still like the way they look. Heidi’s house—the stollen, the tree, her mother—seems full, and ample, and generous, a lot like Christmas itself should be, I think.
When I get home, I tell my mother about the party: the candles on the tree, the stollen, the tradition Heidi has of leaving her shoes by the fireplace on a certain night so Saint Nicholas will fill them with candy if she’s been good.
I ask my mother whether we might be a little German. She hugs me and laughs and says we are not. But that night she lets me put my shoes outside the door to my bedroom, because we don’t have a fireplace, and in the morning my sneakers are full of candy canes.
She was adamant about the tree, though, when I pushed my luck for a real one: “Why?” she said, in a tone I know is useless to argue against. “A real tree makes a mess and is a pain in the neck.”
1979
My father spends this Christmas hospitalized with a lung cancer that will—by next fall—kill him, and my older brother opts to buy a live tree rather than set up the one that’s under the stairs. My mother, weary and distracted, doesn’t argue.
My brother drives a Plymouth Valiant, a boxy little car he inherited from our grandfather, so the best he can manage to tote home is a plump, stocky pine that, when he sets it in its stand, is shorter than I am.
With our parents at the hospital, my brother and I decorate it without them, one eye on the TV. My brother eventually stretches out on the couch with a beer, and though he occasionally glances over at me, he doesn’t get up again. I finish the job myself, placing the old glass balls near the very top of the tree, which is this year more or less even with my sternum. I’m happy about a real tree, at last, but it doesn’t deliver anything close to the wallop of tradition I had imagined it might.
1988
After both my parents had died, there was a surprising volume of things, collected over a lifetime, to sift through in a house that had once housed the whole six of us. On a hot day in August, my two sisters, brother, and I parceled out their stuff in as civil and equitable a way as we could manage. The heat in my parent’s small ranch was oppressive; the job was depressing. Both things made us cranky, which made communication strained, which made us skip some corners in the house just to be done with the whole business. Some things—the Christmas stuff, the family photos—were left with me with a vague understanding to divide it eventually.
That Christmas, I tried to separate the box of ornaments into four piles, one for me and one for each of my siblings. I sat on the floor with the ornaments scattered around me—the plastic Santa boot; the paper mache gingerbread house; the ridiculously heavy flour and salt dough ornaments my sister Karen and I had years earlier copied from an issue of Woman’s Day; tarnished silver bells; the chipped plaster pear; and a few old glass balls that had managed to survive over the years.
The more I sifted through them, the more unbearable became the idea of breaking up what I had come to see as a unit. Separately, they seemed imperfect and ordinary, and in truth they were, seeing as they were purchased from discount stores or crafted by clumsy hands. But, together, the collection of ornaments created a context, and took on a meaning that individually they couldn’t possibly have. Together, they had, I realized then, the kind of gravitas I had longed to find years ago, and which, for a while, I thought was reserved only for old glass ornaments. Or families who baked their own stollen and put candles on trees.
Ours was a different kind of family, maybe. But, together, the oddball collection nonetheless told a story of lives lived out over decades, of successive generations, of the ritual of a family celebrating around a tree, fake or real.
2008
This year, as we have for the past decade, we cut down our Christmas tree at the same small tree farm and lug it home on top of the car. That night, when we hang the ornaments on the tree, I mention to my kids which among the trinkets came from my parents’ house. That’s all I say about them. Neither of children has ever known my parents, and there’s not much else to add.
They get a bigger kick out of their collected history: the oddball stuff we are inspired to string alongside the traditional ornaments—a set of keys from my first house, a cork from a particularly memorable evening, my toddler son’s favorite teether.
If you were to walk into my living room, you’d see a Christmas tree festooned with a collection that, with a few exceptions, appears as any on any other tree in any other living room in the world this time of year. But it’s not. It’s a festive mingling of the dead and the living, the past and the present, and the traditions we are still writing.
So what’s on your tree?
Find more like this: Children, Family History , 1970s, Christmas, Christmas ornaments, Christmas trees, daughters, Family History, kids, mothers, personal history, traditions
I sometimes debate leaving a comment here or not on your posts. Sometimes I feel more like sending an email so I can blather on and on- trying to mix in my usual smart ass humor with the sincerest feelings. More than once your words have struck a deep and resonant chord in me. We’ve joked about it before, so you know pretty much how I feel about what you do here with this space. It is special. It is wonderful. It is very you.
This year, our tree was drawn on a piece of paper from my daughter’s big roll of paper from the easel she no longer has. She covered the entire coffee table with it, so it’s close to 3 feet tall. She drew the tree and then taped on the ornaments that she made in class. We looked for a small fake tree this year, but never found one. Our apartment is crammed too full of crap for a real or large fake tree. Single dad life apparently comes with more large crap than I really should have here. Who knew?
Admittedly, I’ve not been in the most spirited of Christmas moods the past two years. The divorce really sucked that out of me- hopefully only for now. The idea of getting a real tree and then finding or buying ornaments and lights just made me feel ill this year. Last year, she drew a tree to go with the tiny little potted tree we bought a few days before Christmas. It was actually something like Italian Rosemary, or something like that. It died a couple days after Christmas when she was on vacation in Cancun with her brother, mother and “mommy’s friend Chris”. Somehow I neglected to water it while she was gone.
I have short memories of many different Christmas traditions involving ornaments of all types. I can remember making ornaments with my mother- the Queen of Craft. I even remember learning how to do cross stitch so I could make ornaments with her. After my folks divorced, we still got a real tree and we still put out the ornaments, but I got the job of putting the angel on the top (because I’m tall) and stringing the lights around the tree. My sister and I helped mom with the ornaments and the stories of many of the ornaments would be told. It was always a nice little night. Not a big production at all, but fun.
My first marriage resulted in a few good trees and the creation of what I thought would be lifelong traditions. I was wrong of course. But at least I drug my few family ornaments out and placed them on the tree. They followed me into my second marriage and managed to make it onto a few great real trees before ending up on plastic trees- including one particularly ridiculous one from IKEA that looked like an anemic version of the sad little tree from the Charlie Brown special.
After the second divorce, I have no idea where the Christmas ornaments are now and I admit that it doesn’t hurt too much, for now. I vaguely recall an “I found a box with some of your ornaments in it” either mentioned on the phone or sent in a text message. I think. After reading your story, I’d kinda like to get them back to preserve those poignant memories of grandparents that have been long dead and marriages buried by time and new memories. I’d like to preserve a little something for my daughter. Something that we can eventually call our own tradition- other than trees drawn on craft paper with crayons and taped to a wall.
I have my few bits of memories of what Christmas was, when it meant more to me. Before the crushing defeats of life lived under the rule of emotion and not logic. The dreams of a dreamer break painfully. But now I want to find something for her to remember when she sits crosslegged on the floor sorting through our life. I owe her that much for Christmas, since the toys will break or be lost and the clothes will be outgrown.
I sometimes debate leaving a comment here or not on your posts. Sometimes I feel more like sending an email so I can blather on and on- trying to mix in my usual smart ass humor with the sincerest feelings. More than once your words have struck a deep and resonant chord in me. We’ve joked about it before, so you know pretty much how I feel about what you do here with this space. It is special. It is wonderful. It is very you.
This year, our tree was drawn on a piece of paper from my daughter’s big roll of paper from the easel she no longer has. She covered the entire coffee table with it, so it’s close to 3 feet tall. She drew the tree and then taped on the ornaments that she made in class. We looked for a small fake tree this year, but never found one. Our apartment is crammed too full of crap for a real or large fake tree. Single dad life apparently comes with more large crap than I really should have here. Who knew?
Admittedly, I’ve not been in the most spirited of Christmas moods the past two years. The divorce really sucked that out of me- hopefully only for now. The idea of getting a real tree and then finding or buying ornaments and lights just made me feel ill this year. Last year, she drew a tree to go with the tiny little potted tree we bought a few days before Christmas. It was actually something like Italian Rosemary, or something like that. It died a couple days after Christmas when she was on vacation in Cancun with her brother, mother and “mommy’s friend Chris”. Somehow I neglected to water it while she was gone.
I have short memories of many different Christmas traditions involving ornaments of all types. I can remember making ornaments with my mother- the Queen of Craft. I even remember learning how to do cross stitch so I could make ornaments with her. After my folks divorced, we still got a real tree and we still put out the ornaments, but I got the job of putting the angel on the top (because I’m tall) and stringing the lights around the tree. My sister and I helped mom with the ornaments and the stories of many of the ornaments would be told. It was always a nice little night. Not a big production at all, but fun.
My first marriage resulted in a few good trees and the creation of what I thought would be lifelong traditions. I was wrong of course. But at least I drug my few family ornaments out and placed them on the tree. They followed me into my second marriage and managed to make it onto a few great real trees before ending up on plastic trees- including one particularly ridiculous one from IKEA that looked like an anemic version of the sad little tree from the Charlie Brown special.
After the second divorce, I have no idea where the Christmas ornaments are now and I admit that it doesn’t hurt too much, for now. I vaguely recall an “I found a box with some of your ornaments in it” either mentioned on the phone or sent in a text message. I think. After reading your story, I’d kinda like to get them back to preserve those poignant memories of grandparents that have been long dead and marriages buried by time and new memories. I’d like to preserve a little something for my daughter. Something that we can eventually call our own tradition- other than trees drawn on craft paper with crayons and taped to a wall.
I have my few bits of memories of what Christmas was, when it meant more to me. Before the crushing defeats of life lived under the rule of emotion and not logic. The dreams of a dreamer break painfully. But now I want to find something for her to remember when she sits crosslegged on the floor sorting through our life. I owe her that much for Christmas, since the toys will break or be lost and the clothes will be outgrown.
Ann, I have to say that I’m glad I turned off all Twitter, blogs and the like for the holidays. Had I actually read this before or on Christmas I might have been a basket-case for days.
Christmas has always been hard for me as I’m usually not able to be with family. Decorating the tree and church services at this time of year often leave me with a strange mix of emotions. This was also the first year I put up a tree since my divorce two years ago and it was sad going through ornaments that used to mean something and now are just memories of something unfulfilled. What was left was a theme tree – a theme of colors and not much else. Our tree growing up was always so much more and, while not my personal style as an adult, carries so much more weight now that I understand that the stories behind all of the ornaments mean far more than the aesthetic appeal. My goal going forward is to create a tree that has those stories and that history,….tears while decorating be damned!
Ann, I have to say that I’m glad I turned off all Twitter, blogs and the like for the holidays. Had I actually read this before or on Christmas I might have been a basket-case for days.
Christmas has always been hard for me as I’m usually not able to be with family. Decorating the tree and church services at this time of year often leave me with a strange mix of emotions. This was also the first year I put up a tree since my divorce two years ago and it was sad going through ornaments that used to mean something and now are just memories of something unfulfilled. What was left was a theme tree – a theme of colors and not much else. Our tree growing up was always so much more and, while not my personal style as an adult, carries so much more weight now that I understand that the stories behind all of the ornaments mean far more than the aesthetic appeal. My goal going forward is to create a tree that has those stories and that history,….tears while decorating be damned!
I’m misty eyed Annie and reviewing the possibility of abandoning my tree-Nazi tendencies after reading this.
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
I’m misty eyed Annie and reviewing the possibility of abandoning my tree-Nazi tendencies after reading this.
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
My 18-year-old commented to some friends that we hadn’t had a real tree since she was four. I guess the guilt factor was at work, since we broke down and paid for a real tree this year; left the sad, dusty fake one in its box in the basement. I love how the pine scent hits me as soon as I walk in the door. It is so worth it!
When my siblings and I were younger, we had St. Nicholas day. Stockings were filled and left by our bedroom doors on the 6th of Dec. This is probably the result of my mom’s German heritage. Back then we lived in Florida and my Dad would “flock” the tree with this white spray stuff, meant to look like snow. I guess we were hoping for a white Christmas.
Anyway, I loved your heartfelt story and hope you don’t mind me stopping by.
My 18-year-old commented to some friends that we hadn’t had a real tree since she was four. I guess the guilt factor was at work, since we broke down and paid for a real tree this year; left the sad, dusty fake one in its box in the basement. I love how the pine scent hits me as soon as I walk in the door. It is so worth it!
When my siblings and I were younger, we had St. Nicholas day. Stockings were filled and left by our bedroom doors on the 6th of Dec. This is probably the result of my mom’s German heritage. Back then we lived in Florida and my Dad would “flock” the tree with this white spray stuff, meant to look like snow. I guess we were hoping for a white Christmas.
Anyway, I loved your heartfelt story and hope you don’t mind me stopping by.
Evergreen Christmas brought me to the misty edge of welling…sense some strong similiarities in our histories…however “imperfect or ordinary our ornaments” as you so aptly depicted, they represent the substance of our lives which is both “ordinary” and “extraordinary” …live is pretty amazing…I’m contacting my brother, Rob, to see if he has any old family ornaments…after the demise of my parents, I separated the photos for distribution…if the ornaments escaped the trash bin, he would have been the one that rescued them…one X’mas he surprised me, my sister and brother with framed drawings from mom…I’ve got to stop now…I’m starting to “well” again…thanks for your amazing gift of letting us see the magic in life…Happy New Year!!!
Evergreen Christmas brought me to the misty edge of welling…sense some strong similiarities in our histories…however “imperfect or ordinary our ornaments” as you so aptly depicted, they represent the substance of our lives which is both “ordinary” and “extraordinary” …live is pretty amazing…I’m contacting my brother, Rob, to see if he has any old family ornaments…after the demise of my parents, I separated the photos for distribution…if the ornaments escaped the trash bin, he would have been the one that rescued them…one X’mas he surprised me, my sister and brother with framed drawings from mom…I’ve got to stop now…I’m starting to “well” again…thanks for your amazing gift of letting us see the magic in life…Happy New Year!!!
For various reasons we couldn’t get the energy or “cheer” up to carry on the tradition of our family adventure to purchase a real tree. So, we settled for a 4 ft. pre-lit artificial one. On it we hung one ornament, our newest, one we found on vacation in Aruba. Every year we always try to add a new ornament, something with meaning, a memory. Last year it was a bright red high-heel ornament- in memory of my mom. Maybe next year the tradition will come back. We’ll buy the real tree and unpack the memories.
Happy New Year!
For various reasons we couldn’t get the energy or “cheer” up to carry on the tradition of our family adventure to purchase a real tree. So, we settled for a 4 ft. pre-lit artificial one. On it we hung one ornament, our newest, one we found on vacation in Aruba. Every year we always try to add a new ornament, something with meaning, a memory. Last year it was a bright red high-heel ornament- in memory of my mom. Maybe next year the tradition will come back. We’ll buy the real tree and unpack the memories.
Happy New Year!
Losing our family’s beloved pony in the weeks before Christmas cast a shadow of sorrow on this year’s holiday preparations. Instead of cutting a tree, we procrastinated and finally bought one off a lot just a few days before Christmas. It was a small tree, one that wouldn’t require as much effort to get in the house and to decorate as some of the more impressive trees we’ve had in years past. The decorated tree, twinkling in the family room, brought some cheer back to the house and soon after, the house was filled with boisterous relatives, brightening our moods even more. And on the tree, new this year…a beautiful white pony which looks so much like our pony that it takes my breath away and brings tears to my eyes. Next year though, when we unpack that ornament, I know we’ll smile as we recall the many happy memories we have of that mischievous but sweet boy.
Thanks Ann, for yet another beautiful and thought provoking story, and thanks to all for posting your thoughts too. Happy New Year!
Losing our family’s beloved pony in the weeks before Christmas cast a shadow of sorrow on this year’s holiday preparations. Instead of cutting a tree, we procrastinated and finally bought one off a lot just a few days before Christmas. It was a small tree, one that wouldn’t require as much effort to get in the house and to decorate as some of the more impressive trees we’ve had in years past. The decorated tree, twinkling in the family room, brought some cheer back to the house and soon after, the house was filled with boisterous relatives, brightening our moods even more. And on the tree, new this year…a beautiful white pony which looks so much like our pony that it takes my breath away and brings tears to my eyes. Next year though, when we unpack that ornament, I know we’ll smile as we recall the many happy memories we have of that mischievous but sweet boy.
Thanks Ann, for yet another beautiful and thought provoking story, and thanks to all for posting your thoughts too. Happy New Year!
Dammit, Ann, thanks for the yule log in my throat– I’m all weepy. I’m grateful I haven’t taken the tree down yet– I will note again what I can’t put into words in the moment and you SAY EXACTLY what I feel! Again! A tree is mingling of the living and the dead. It’s a living history of your lives as a family.
I do have my favorite ornament from my family home in Omaha up there, near the top where no one can break it. It was sold at the Philips 66 station across from church and we would get them after mass. It was a styrofoam ball with silky threads clinging to it, making it seem satiny and smooth. My and my sister’s and mom’s job was to stick the ball with sequined pins and ribbons. Total 70′s Christmas glamour. I see that one and I get misty every year. Every week they would have a new style and we would clamor to get the new kit. Now if I could just see that Norelco ad on a black and white of Santa Claus sledding through a pine-treed hill….
Dammit, Ann, thanks for the yule log in my throat– I’m all weepy. I’m grateful I haven’t taken the tree down yet– I will note again what I can’t put into words in the moment and you SAY EXACTLY what I feel! Again! A tree is mingling of the living and the dead. It’s a living history of your lives as a family.
I do have my favorite ornament from my family home in Omaha up there, near the top where no one can break it. It was sold at the Philips 66 station across from church and we would get them after mass. It was a styrofoam ball with silky threads clinging to it, making it seem satiny and smooth. My and my sister’s and mom’s job was to stick the ball with sequined pins and ribbons. Total 70′s Christmas glamour. I see that one and I get misty every year. Every week they would have a new style and we would clamor to get the new kit. Now if I could just see that Norelco ad on a black and white of Santa Claus sledding through a pine-treed hill….
Just beautiful is all I can say. My past Christmases were so lacking of the love you speak of that today
I dread this time of year. Thanks for cheering me up. Jerry
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