Santa’s Ornaments

For as far back as I can remember (a lot of years, he said, still wondering where they went), every Christmas Santa’s Ornaments would appear on the family Christmas tree, waiting to be discovered by the kids in the morning. As I grew older and realized the several new ornaments each year were purchased by Mom or Dad, I still looked for the ornaments in the morning as if they were Santa’s. The two or three ornaments we’d find every Christmas were always special, never of the dozen balls-in-a-box variety … maybe crystal bells or a hand-blown Santa, and over the years they became family treasures.

In 1968, the year I married the love of my life, I had my 24th Christmas tree and my wife, Muri, had her first. I had my first channakiah. We decorated our tree with several boxes of generic ornaments from Nyanza and on Christmas Eve, I officially became a provider of Santa’s Ornaments. As of today I have fulfilled my duties for 49 years, through childless years, years when our kids looked anxiously for Santa’s Ornament on Christmas morning just as I did, and in our almost empty nest years, when I bought the ornaments mostly for me. As a result, when our tree is fully decorated it holds several hundred beautiful and unique ornaments, each associated with a year of our life together.

This has been a feel-old December. The remains of a turned ankle and a bout of sciatica made getting around slow and painful until about a week ago. A good friend got a December surprise of open heart surgery, and what energy I had was spent going to the hospital to visit him. He is doing very well in his recovery, thank God. But Channukah (early this year) rolled by the Christmas season found Older Eyes way behind in his shopping and with no decorations up. Shopping on Amazon solved most of my shopping issues and my wife Muri suggested we just buy just a small tree this year, but I couldn’t do it. I compromised by putting up our big tree but only using one box of ornaments, meaning that years of our Christmases won’t make their appearance this year. Muri assured me it still looked pretty and I let her convince me.

Last night, as we were getting ready to fly to Salt Lake to spend Christmas with our grandkids, Older Eyes slipped into the living room and took two ornaments from a Hobby Lobby bag, a cat holding a red Christmas ball and a hand blown glass ball from Poland. Santa’s Ornaments. Some traditions are sacred. What are your sacred holiday traditions?

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Tags: Christmas, family, feeling older, traditions

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