Spirits of Christmas past…

There is nothing like decorating a Christmas tree to lift one’s spirit, even in the face of the sad turmoil Francesco and I have experienced in the past few weeks, even when forced to do so alone. (Francesco returns from Italy tomorrow.)

I finally found and bought a small tree that looked like it needed a good home; a spindly ten euro affair sandwiched forlornly between fat overgrown neighbors that were fetching as much as eighty-nine smackeroos.

For the price I think the tree is fine, as its spare skinny branches make ideal space to display my ornaments, some of which are rather large, and all of which remind me of Christmases past. Indeed, it is the pleasure of seeing and handling these decorations each December that motivates me to hack up trees and branches as I deck the halls.

My ornament collection stretches back to my university days in Washington when (in youthful frenzy) I bought a dozen little candles and German tin candle holders, a box of exquisitely razor-thin wood-shaving ornaments from Sweden, and an assortment of Mexican raffia angels and bells to decorate my college dorm room. Since then, I’ve never been brave enough (or so foolish) to actually light the little candles on the tree – and despite being batted down and savaged by various household pets over the years, most of the delicate wood shavings and raffia figures have blessedly survived.

There are also gold and silver balls from immediate post-university days (now attaining venerable age) and the eight white unicorns, made of cotton-stuffed cloth and yarn, dating from my college working stint in Albany, New York. And six candy cane-colored wreaths crafted on Saint Croix by a group of Cruzan senior ladies who were thrilled when I bought them at a charity bazaar there.

I later splurged on the angel commanding the top-most spire - handmade of dried banana leaves, which is a traditional craft in Bermuda. Also from Bermuda are three bejeweled velvet ornaments given to me by my friend and colleague there, Jane Farrar, plus a set of small felt dolls representing King Henry VIII and his six wives that were a present from two other island friends, Salil Bhalla and James Burn.

Francesco and I added a collection of snowflakes fashioned from straw that we found at a flea market in a small and cold Umbrian town a few Decembers ago, but perhaps my greatest treasure – at least the one that rouses the most profound nostalgia every Christmas – is a collection of hand-wrought ornaments made and given to me by one of my best high school friends, Susan Gaylord Steele.

I don’t think arts and crafts were high on Sue’s list of normal pursuits – she of constant reading classic literature, European and American - but she must have spent many creative hours choosing and gluing miniature laces and ribbons, pinning down tiny seed pearls, and smothering styrofoam globes in brilliantly hued velvets.

Sue did all of this in 1968, two years after we’d graduated and during a summer break from university, that saw both of us working at part-time jobs in Dover, Delaware. (She toiled at the sprawling General Foods plant, going crazy by measuring ‘pop-chip’ dough every fifteen minutes as part of a quality control project, while I labored in scorching heat, personally numbering all 13,000 bleacher seats at Dover Downs International Speedway. What a summer to forget!)

I was totally surprised a few years later when Sue gave me her beautiful ornaments upon moving with her mother, father and family to Albuquerque. ‘You worked so hard on these,’ I said, ‘don’t you really want to keep them?’ ‘No, you have them,’ she replied, ‘so you can always remember and think of me.’

Sue was killed in a car crash a few months after arriving in New Mexico - and I do remember and think of her every Christmas when her glittering decorations hang in exhalted premier place, amid lush green boughs on my Christmas tree.