Susan Writes

Must a Christmas tree have a theme?  Like the trees at the Cookeville History Museum?  Or the twenty-foot-tall trees in retail stores that are draped with red ribbons, gold bells, and white harps?

Last week when I took the lid off the cardboard box labeled Christmas ornaments, lying on top was a piece of notebook paper – written on both sides and every line filled.  The top line reads, “Christmas Eve 2013 6:45 a.m.” 

            I began with these words: “I love this time alone.  Early morning. Almost daylight.  Coffee.  Christmas tree decorated and lights shine brightly.  All my favorite ornaments are on this tree.”  And then I described many of the ornaments.

The plastic Santa sitting on a white reindeer, with a broken leg, was on Mom and Dad’s tree when I was a kid in the 1950’s. Two white square plastic lanterns decorated the package that Husband gave me Christmas 1968 – the gift was my engagement ring.  

The red plastic bells were on our first tree that we decorated in 1969.  I made the felt tree skirt from a kit for that first tree, and I embroidered and hand-stitched the sequins. (Still attached now, fifty-four years later.)

During the early 1970’s when Husband worked at the Cain-Sloan department store in Nashville, we bought the silver balls that have Currier and Ives scenes printed on them.

I made the fabric calico print stuffed candy canes and bells and the plywood paint-by-the-number ornaments when Daughter and Son were toddlers.  When these ornaments were handled and played with and fell onto the floor, they didn’t break.  These and the plastic red bells and plastic white lanterns were the only ornaments on our tree for a few years.

Daughter and Son made the felt blue bird and brown gingerbread man, both backed with white poster board and hung with paper clips, when they kindergarten students at Northeast School. The two Walt Disney World ornaments were bought during family trips – one in 1981 and the second, New Year’s 1989.

I made the quilted mitten from scraps of Granny’s quilt that I cut up to make Daughter and a few of her friends a heart pillow when they graduated from Cookeville High School in 1992.  The flock of assorted birds are gifts from students when I taught at Capshaw Elementary School from the late 1980s until 2008.

While she was a college student, Daughter made wooden ornaments that have burned designs.  The clear ball hanging with a gold ribbon is filled with sand from a Bermuda beach where my college girlfriends and I took a summer trip in 1997.

Husband’s mom and dad gave us the red, white and blue patriotic ornaments.  In 2009 when they were toddlers, Samuel and Elsie made the salt dough pink heart and blue circle.

Since 2013, more ornaments have been collected.  One that reminds me why we celebrate Christmas: a hand-carved olive wood nativity ornament that I bought in Jerusalem in 2018.

The theme of our tree is like many of yours – a memory tree.

December 13, 2023

Filed under: Christmas | Tagged: Christmas tree |