‘Just put the last ornament on the living room Christmas tree. Decorating trees is a labor of love, both retrospective and prospective.
Our parents gave us an ornament every year, so that we’d have some ornaments when we grew up and had trees of our own. They weren’t, for the most part, fancy. One year, for instance, they were miniature mitten-shapes cut from red felt, decorated with a bit of white yarn, and fastened together with a little ribbon. Perfect. Funny thing, though, what springs to mind when I see the annual ornaments isn’t having had them for our first trees. It’s the sense of having been so loved in our family of origin.
Mom and Dad didn’t stop giving us ornaments when we were grown. When Mom, with the eye of an artist, came across ornaments of lovely, simple, and generally whimsical design, she would get them for us. I tend to group the ornaments she gave us when I decorate our trees. They have such a sweet feel that they belong together. On the living room tree, a Mom section overlaps with the sheep section.
Yup, the sheep section, which overlooks my husband’s reading chair. Four kinds of sheep gaze out at him from the tree. That section is also hung with sweaters, one of them with a message from Daisy the sheep, whose fleece was used to make the yarn of which that sweater—which sports a sheep on the front—was knit. More sweaters appear in the sheep section and elsewhere on the tree. Some of those sweaters clothe other critters which gaze at my husband, and some of the sweaters are free range.
The first additions to the tree, after the lights, are the Merrie Minstrel bells, a set of twelve brass bells tenuously connected by entirely inadequate wire, that—when all goes well–actually ring. All going well includes not only insuring the wiring is intact for another year but making sure all the bells hang clear of foliage so that, when each one’s turn comes, it doesn’t go thud. The bells play a medley of Christmas songs, and the effect is not the same when punctuated by flat thuds.
After the bells come the ornaments, always beginning with the same five. Those five are elegant together, shapes and colors complementing. They go front and center, and form the basis for everything else. Some of the other ornaments have their own spots as well. The dirigible goes here, the samovar a little farther to the right, the brown bear and the astronaut center and left, the green Hershey’s kiss around to the side.
When all the ornaments are on—and there are hundreds of them—it’s time for the birds and berries. The birds are tiny, red-flocked-and-feathered. They perch on wires that twist around branches. The berries, also red, come one at each end of a wire and twist onto branches. With the wires largely invisible, the birds and berries look suspended in flight and the whole tree seems ineffably light, as if about to lift from its moorings.
The family room tree has another feel altogether. Exuberant. Zany. People who see the living room tree for the first time go, “Ohh,” or “Ooh.” People who see the family room tree for the first time laugh. And point and say, “Look at that one! And that one over there! And that one!” It cheers folks up.
I love decorating Christmas trees, ours or someone else’s. A few years back, we made it to Utah for The Christmas Party. My husband’s extended family is really big and really wonderful, and every December the family gets together for a really big, really wonderful Christmas party. His sister Mary hosted the party that year, and I got to help her get ready for it, including decorating trees with her curated collection of ornaments. We had a fabulous time.
We expected to have a fabulous time with my sister Carol in northern Michigan this Christmas. Barring CoVid, our daughter plays the organ for Carol’s tiny church—the only time all year that it gets played—and sings a solo during the midnight service on Christmas Eve. But our daughter is ill, and forty northern Michigan counties, including Carol’s are under a blizzard warning. Much of the Midwest, in fact, is expecting the same, massive storm. So we’ll be here.
Mary and Joseph weren’t spending their time as they had planned either. But they readied themselves as best they could. After all, the baby was coming. And we prepare our hearts and homes each year, no matter what, for that baby’s birth.
23 December 2022