Did your family have heirloom or cherished ornaments? Did you ever string popcorn and cranberries? Did your family or ancestors make Christmas ornaments?
We had several old ornaments - mostly glass balls and a couple glass bird shaped ornaments. We never had a star that went on the top of the tree, but we did hang a small comet-shaped metal ornament near the top. I do remember stringing popcorn several times, but we did not do it every year. We made paper chains and often added to them year after year. When I was young I remember large multi-colored lights, but when I got older we bought small multi-color lights for the tree. We now use small white lights on the tree. There were many homemade ornaments made by various members of the family. There are many homemade ornaments on our tree now. My wife has made many cross-stitched and tatted ornaments that fill the branches. I remember making ornaments with my Mom out of dough. These were often farm animals, but they usually broke after a year or two. Some of the older ornaments may have come from previous generations, but, if they were, the history was never passed along to me.
The one thing I like the best was not a tree ornament but a decoration. We had a village consisting of little wooden houses and buildings, farm animals, people, cars, trains and trees. I would spent hours arranging and rearranging this village into different configurations. Some years I would get something new to add to the village.
Unfortunately, I don't seem to have any photographs of the village or of our Christmas tree from when I was growing up.
© 2010, copyright William C. Haskell
Funny how the fashion goes back and forth between colored lights and white lights!
ReplyDeleteI still like both, but some of the new LED lights have a really intense color!
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