3/12/02 – Madison Eagle

 I had to stop my post-holiday cleanup tonight to say thank you.   You’re our day care teachers, and our grade school teachers, the ones who made sure our kids came home each holiday season with handmade ornaments. 

I’m not proud to say that in the beginning, these were not my favorite things.   Back in the days when it seemed important to have a perfectly symmetrical evergreen decorated with only white lights, gold ribbons, and silver ornaments, I grimaced secretly as I hung a toddler or grade-schooler creation.  It would be dripping with macaroni and huge globs of damp glitter-glue, and I’d put it low and near the wall side of the tree.  I announced, partly to convince myself, that the kids’ ornaments were hung lower on the tree so they could see them easily.  I knew I was supposed to love these hideous little doodads, and I did in a way, but they interfered with the work of art that was becoming the family Christmas tree.  The foot-tall cardboard candy cane with the top lopped over at an odd angle just didn’t fit into my tasteful design.

Then we all traveled forward in time… sixteen years, to be exact.  The babies are in their teens, and have become really nice people.  My husband and I are still stunned at how fast it goes, and we talk about how all our lives will change in a few years. 

The Christmas tree changed with us.  To the eyes of a decorator, it must look shabby and completely uncoordinated.    To our eyes, it’s grown way beyond issues of complementary colors and artistic arrangement.  The lopped over candy cane is now near the top of the tree, with a brown conical one-antlered Rudolph head just above it.   Of course the decorations made with the kids’ pictures are the most wonderful of all.  There’s the laminated cardboard Christmas tree with my son’s picture at age 3, in the center.  He has a dab of red paint on his nose from his role as one of Santa’s reindeer in the holiday play, and a look of complete satisfaction on his face.  Nearby is a large cardboard wreath framing a wonderful picture of our daughter at 2, decked out in Mickey Mouse ears, wearing a Tinkerbell shirt, with her trusty blanket at her side.  Her face shows that she had been involved in something else, and was a little surprised by the interruption.  It’s a look we still see every day.

   The tree now holds relics of our growth as a family; an annual tree-museum of our  history.  We wouldn’t trade it for all the shiny, perfect trees at Treasure Island. 

We have the pleasure of at least two evenings a year spent unpacking and repacking the ornaments, and remembering where they came from.   They’re a little worn and in need of repair as their parts fall off and the pictures begin to separate from the backing.  There’s more glitter on our hands than on the hollow painted eggshells festooned with sequins.  We fix them and store them in hopes that some grandchildren will enjoy them the same way we enjoy the one ornament that’s survived from my husband’s childhood: an ancient Santa face made from a walnut shell and bearded with cotton.  His mother saved it carefully for years.

I’m so grateful, though, to all those teachers.  Did you know we’d be looking at these beautiful, shaky, strangely shaped and colored decorations so many years later, and remembering the magic of our children?  I think you did.  Thanks.