Favorite Christmas tree ornaments offer meaning and reflection over the holidays.
Author's Christmas Tree
By JOAN MORRIS REILLY
My favorite Christmas tree ornaments have been around for many years and each one has a story.
One of them is a glass ornament which was part of a set that I bought when I was a newlywed celebrating my first Christmas as a married lady.
Through the years, the rest of the set was broken and discarded but this one survived. This little ornament with its chipped paint will always bring me back to a time when life seemed to work better, before divorce, family deaths and estranged siblings irrevocably changed things.
I hang it on the tree each year as a battle scarred remnant of another time. It reminds me of the old Dean Martin song. . . “some grief, some joy . . . memories are made of this.”
A favorite aunt of ours crocheted several ornaments for me. One is a picture frame with a photo of my two children at ages two and two months which I cherish.
She also made beautiful angels, miniature ice-skates with paper clips for the blades, red felt mittens, small Christmas stockings and huge lacy snowflakes to hang in the window.
After she passed on, I found some of the ornaments that she had used on her own tree as well as another red felt mitten which had a note inside.
It read, “A Merry Christmas to you from me, here is a mitten to hang on your tree, though miles may keep us apart, this handclasp comes right from my heart. Love Nonnie.”
I shared this with my siblings the following Christmas. We were all touched by this message written by “Nonnie” when she was still the aunt we knew and loved, long before Alzheimer’s claimed her.
I also have keepsakes that my children made in grammar school. My son gave me a beautiful ornament using the cover of a jar lined with green velvet containing a scene of the shepherds watching the star. My daughter made a foil ornament with red and green candles on it. These handmade offerings will always have prominent places on my tree.
Some other memorable ornaments include one from St. Mary’s Church which now has another name, a little porcelain cottage given to each of us when we attended a family reunion in Ireland in 2008, a large old-style ornament that belonged to an aunt on the other side of the family and a crystal cactus from a sister who lives in Arizona.
After my parents died, I made photo ornaments for each sibling in my family, one with my dad’s photo and one with my mother’s. I also made two of these with my late brother and his wife’s photos and gave it to their grandchild who they never knew with the thought that she would see her grandparents every Christmas when she hung these reminders on the Christmas tree.
These simple ornaments can’t compare with some of the beautiful costly decorations that are out there but they are truly priceless and I couldn’t imagine a Christmas without them.
Joan Morris Reilly is the author of “A Hungry Hill Trinity,” and the recent “Other Voices, Other Times: Hungry Hill Remembered, “ available on Amazon.com. She was also a contributor to The Republican’s “The Irish Legacy: A History of the Irish in Western Massachusetts.” Â