It’s almost time to turn the page to a new year. Which of course means putting away the Christmas decorations and moving forward with new year’s resolutions and all that good stuff. While I am more than ready to get going in a new direction, I am reluctant to put Christmas away - especially this year. Not staying stuck in the past, just lingering in those spaces between the past, present and future that this year’s Christmas decorations represent - and all of it is imbued with the Christmas magic on which I grew up. That any décor is still here to gaze upon is incredulous. Because anything that made it safely out of the fire at Dovetail Lodge is miraculous. Most of Christmas was pitched early on. The last things put there for storage, they were the first things to go, as the melted bins were barely recognizable. Albeit still a bit mangled, a few bins were spared; their contents carefully curated by my personal “spirits of ancestors past” nostalgic for the Christmas history in our family.
Let me explain.
I was raised by a mom who truly believed in the spirit of Santa all year long. She went to great lengths to make sure that everyone around her felt well loved and appreciated by perpetually dispersing small gifts of gratitude. One of her more prolific mediums for her expression was ceramics. Every Tuesday evening throughout and beyond my childhood, Mom, Gram and I would spend our evenings in the basement of Mrs. Hazel Yount making ceramic trinkets. Mostly holiday knik knacks but especially Christmas knick knacks. Santa mugs, Christmas Tree Cookie Platters, and Christmas ornaments of all sorts. Those small Christmas trees with a lightbulb base that lit up the plastic tooth pick mini lightbulb shapes that you stuck in the holes? Yep, back in the day you made those things by hand and then gave them away. One of the rules in the making of any ceramically molded bauble is that one must scrape one’s initials and date on the bottom before it gets fired in the kiln. So even though in modern days these items can be picked up for a few pennies at the dollar store or several dollars at Pottery Barn, there’s no price tag on picking up a Santa Mug and seeing, engraved by their own hand, your mom or gram’s initials and the year they made it on the bottom of a cup. Gather a few cups? You’ve been gifted a collection spanning decades and decades of holiday cheer. THEY MADE IT THROUGH THE FIRE. Of all the possible heirlooms, these holiday items will continue to be passed down for generations to come. There isn’t enough milk and cookies to sweeten that news.
The other gifts my mom made with love (and a bit of frustration) were hand knit Christmas stockings complete with your name knitted into the design of the stocking. I’ve had mine for as long as I can remember. As my own nuclear unit expanded, so did the stockings. Mom made one for Ralph, then Hallie and then Hannah ( who is currently off on her adventurous walk about through South America - I’d trade a photo with a Xmas stocking for hiking boots too)
These stockings are also magic in that they stretch quite well to swallow the oranges, chocolates and smallish treasures for which my parental Mr. and Mrs. Claus squabbled while filling them — though every year they managed to fit it all in. More magical is how they subsequently returned to their unwavering devotion for each other in time to enjoy Christmas morning when we rushed to empty those stockings. All to say, these stockings are never really empty - filled to brim with memories even when their contents has been devoured. Not something that is easily replaced. At first only my stocking was found — in it’s vintage pristine condition. Say what? And why wasn’t it in the same bin with the others? (Why am I even questioning?) I stashed it away for safe keeping, not able to wrap my brain around any of it. For the longest time I thought the rest of them were gone. Only a few weeks before Christmas, with Hallie’s help, I finally had the courage to sift though the rest of the partially mangled bins. We found the rest of stockings in the last bin. The. Last. Bin. And they were salvageable. Quite mystical? Perhaps. More true is that this trick is totally on brand for my mother who loved joking around with gag gifts more than the opening of the one or two ‘real’ presents that went under the tree. This time she was able to accomplish both tasks at once.
Her legacy continues as my mom manages to gift me the best presents even from the other side of the veil. The rest of the things that were spared were items of great sentimental value that are irreplaceable. Need some ornaments? Here’s the box of sparkling sequins pinned to styrofoam shaped ornaments meticulously and painstakingly hand made by my dad’s mom. Pining for the snow globes with photos of the girls visiting with Santa? Well, the water evaporated but the snow globes, they’re all here. All of them. And the tiny photographs? Just fine.
It might be hard to think there could be anything better than these treasures. Yet there is one very special banner my sister and I made the year Hannah was born. We traced her baby feet to be the fabric pattern for the base of a Christmas tree formed from fabric patterns of Hallie’s toddler sized hands and decorated with globs and blobs of sparkly fabric paint artistically fashioned by Hallie’s actual toddler hands. A high end version of the hand paint artwork typically brought home by the pre-school crowd. I love it so much. R loves it even more. In fact, THAT’s the only thing he cared about. The banner only sort of made it through; it is in serious need of repair. Yet it still exists. Fortunately both creative problem solving and artistic talent runs deep in our family — this reclamation project will be part of this smaller yet more meaningful collection of Christmas décor by this time next year.
Speaking of years, R has been after me for quite some time to cull the boxes and boxes of baubles. On the one hand, be careful what you wish for. I don’t recommend sifting through the rubble of a burned out homestead as a way to get rid of stuff. On the other hand, I couldn’t have asked for better guidance to determine which trinkets I really wanted to keep and which I could live without. Though celestial intervention might seem a bit farfetched to some, I don’t know how else to explain it. “Christmas Magic” reveals itself in all sorts of mysterious ways.
Beyond religious and commercial overtones, the spirit of Christmas taught to me centered around the sharing of hand crafted tokens as a way to show someone you cared. That you were thinking of them. Paraphrasing the Grinch’s Dr. Seuss, “the magic of Christmas is within our grasp if we just open our hands and hearts to each other.” Sappy? Of course. True? Absolutely. Tricky to remember? You betcha. Yet maybe that’s the basic message symbolized all our versions of holiday “pantookas, dafflers and wuzzles.” Whilst stepping into a new year, I’m trying to remember that concept as I reluctantly put away these hand crafted heirlooms I can hardly believe I still have. Cheers to keeping these Christmas ideals on hand till I unpack these gems next December.