Friday, December 3, 2010

Advent Calendar: December 3



(This is post 3 in the Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories hosted by Geneabloggers.com)

Prompt: Day 3 - Christmas Tree Ornaments
Did your family have heirloom or cherished ornaments? Did you ever string popcorn and cranberries? Did your family or ancestors make Christmas ornaments?

(This post desperately needs a picture, but the subject in question is packed away in a box in my parents' house and I'm not going to bug them to get it out.)

You know those perfect holiday trees with fancy matching ornaments? We didn't have one of those. Our family tree was decorated with a mish mash of ornaments--some made, some bought, each attached with a hook and a memory.

One of *the* best ornaments on our tree was my first pre-school Christmas art creation, circa 1976. It was a piece of white yarn, maybe 24 inches in length, dipped in starchy glue, then covered with glitter and fashioned into abstract art (or maybe just a flat blob). This was the first evidence of my stellar creative expression.

That ornament still exists today and my parents still hang it on the tree. Most of the glitter has fallen off of the yarn, and the tape that says AMY ripped off. Luckily, my mom re-attached it with more tape.

My parents laugh every year that ornament comes out of the box and goes onto the tree. Of course I know their laughing with me and not at me because that's their job.

Now I'm all grown up with my own house, and we've started our own traditions.


(This post was originally published December 3, 2009)

5 comments:

  1. How could you pick just one, there were so many? Might be s good topic for your blog, "The Twelvw Days of Christmas Best Family Heirloom Christmas Ornaments". Here are my picks but I have more. The bug eaten marshmallow stiok man is my favorite.

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  2. And I have a similar favorite (dubbed Debbie's Brains, because they look like, well, brains). Everyone laughs at me, too.

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  3. My sister always says, "I'm not laughing with you, I AM laughing at you!" But then that's a sister's job...

    I think that this year I'll take pictures of all our most "unique" ornaments...and that will give my sister one more thing to laugh AT!

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  4. I had a similar favorite for the longest time. I made in while I was in daycare, ca 1965. There were several times it was almost lost but made it through. It was finally lost after a flood in the basement of the old homestead (ca 2004).

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  5. There are a few handmade ornaments in our collection that are no longer recognizable. But I just can't throw them out.

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