Decorating the Christmas Tree is a treasured holiday ritual. Millions bring the box of decorations down from the attic and unpack ornaments and nuggets of Christmases past. Each ornament has a memory and significance to it. We hope they are warm and kind memories but sometimes they are memories of loved ones lost to death, divorce, or some other kind of separation. Even the good memories are of times that cannot be recovered.
This year our country cottage is cozy and ready for decorating. Just in time for a real Christmas Tree. My husband asked what I wanted for Christmas and all I wanted was to decorate a Christmas Tree. A couple of days later we picked up a huge box of decorations from an ad on Facebook Marketplace. Stopping at Goodwill we found some grab bags of random Christmas decorations.
It was so much fun discovering each ornament. Most of them had been lovingly wrapped with care in newspapers of by gone days. I wondered what the story was for each piece. Had they donned a tree for 30 years only in the end to be found in an attic by new owners of their home?
One set was deep purple sparkly ornaments, a mini Mardi Gras mask, a giant butterfly, an exquisite mini chandelier, and sequined purple poinsettias. I pictured a wealthy woman that had multiple Christmas trees throughout her mansion and this one was silver tinsel with purple bulbs and New Orleans style bling ornaments. Every year she buys new decorations based on her preferred theme of the year. I imagined her year 2020 themes to be lots of figurines wearing masks and watching the world from their windows. This year she would not be in a purple cheerful mood but rather the dull blue green of scrubs found on hospital ICU nurses.
Many of the ornaments had never been opened such as a package of shiny apple ornaments and a box of velvet bows. Perhaps they had been lost behind a couch. Why were they never opened? Maybe they were for present toppers or center pieces for a party that never materialized due to social distancing.
All these imaginary histories of each ornament remain fiction. The real tales of ornaments’ past will forever remain a mystery. This is part of the fun of buying second hand. A sense of history follows each piece and gives it a life of its own. Somehow the object gains more meaning than a store bought item.
As opposed to the Walmart bulbs were made in a factory in China, road on a boat across the wintery pacific. Made its way across the California mountains to my Walmart in Paris, Texas. Not a very long or romantic history.
The Barbie bulb circa 1998 brings to mind a young mother and a little daughter. Santa Clause brought the little girl a Pink Barbie mansion with an elevator. Maybe even the pink corvette convertible many a girl and woman who was passed the age for dolls had coveted.
Although imagining magical Christmas was a fun exercise while decorating my own tree in my newly renovated country cottage, I was happy and glad that I had no real memories associated with the ornaments. I have only love of my husband, my family and a glorious hope for the future.
This Christmas we pray that you too remember the most important thing while admiring your Christmas decorations. That glorious thing is the wonderful and eternal love that Jesus has for you when he humbled himself to be born in a barn to endure a life showing us how to live and die with love being His only, all-encompassing purpose.
Merry Christmas
