Today we brought home a little Christmas tree. Not as little as some years, but not ceiling height either. It had to fit in the Golf after all. I was able to light it respectably with two strings of lights. Then, the ornaments.
I brought a couple of shoe boxes up from the basement, and the girls unwrapped everything and spread the pieces out on the table. Too late I discovered that one box I thought was ornaments, there had been one right on top when I peeked in the box, was knick-knacks from my childhood. I had had a closed display case to keep all the dust collectors safe. How had these all arrived in my basement? There were tiny corn husk dolls, a china cat, an olive wood bell from Bethlehem, a plastic Garfield, a tiger made out the flat wooden ice cream spoons, an ocarina shaped like a frog, a handpainted plastic cowboy and Indian pair on horseback memorializing The Indian in the Cupboard by Lynne Reid Banks, two Star Wars action figures, ...
My girls were delighted. They abandoned the tree decorating in favor of playing with all these new toys. One of the corn husk dolls was named "Mother Nature" because she had a floppy brim hat and a garden rake. The Stormtrooper was made a servant because he was a bad guy. The cowboy and Indian became dads when the girls' Polly Pocket dolls joined the scene.
I hung ornaments, a choir of pegs in colorful robes painted by my mother decades ago, bead and pipe cleaner shapes made by me during my elementary years, plaster angels from my grandfather's tree, soft sculpture memorializing my nephew's first Christmas, cutesy figures from college friends, a clothespin angel made by a former coworker, a laminated doily from my oldest daughter during her preschool year, ...
Just an afternoon of making Christmas now and revisiting so many pleasantries of Christmas past.
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