Saturday, December 3, 2011

Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories: 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?

Early signs of my brilliance

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)

2 comments:

  1. Amy, that is exactly the type of ornament that my children made except they used colored yarn and no glitter. They still have them on their trees, since I gave the ornaments to them once they moved out. Thank you.

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  2. We didn't have any Christmas traditions when I was growing up but when our children were born we began to make several. We are very Western people and I collect Western ornaments so each year we would add new ones. Our children did make many in school and church that we added but have long been saved for their own trees. We never open gifts on Christmas eve and we always only get to have our stocking in the morning and gifts after dinner. Everyone gets a stocking and they are more fun to me than the gifts. I hope now that my granddaughter will want to carry on some of the memories we are making.

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