Advent Calendar - Dec. 3rd - The Evolution of My Christmas Ornaments

When my sons were little maybe I was a little over-protective I guess, or my boys were a little rambunctious, but I didn't put any glass ornaments on our tree. Everything had to be edible, or at least non-toxic when they were babies, so I decorated with strings of popcorn, candy canes, gingerbread and sugar cookie cut-outs.

As the boys grew out of the "mouthing" stage, I made salt dough ornaments which I painted with enamel so that they would last a few years. We made tin foil and construction paper chains for garlands and and glittery Chinese lanterns with a gold cardboard star on top.

The first hint that I had that the kids were getting tired of the same thing is when they went to "The House of the Christmas Mouse", a kids' Christmas shopping event that the Community Centre had that year, no adults allowed in. They came home with Christmas ornaments made from walnuts so I bought some walnuts so we could make ornaments.

The boys were growing up and I started to make Victorian crochet ornaments to replace the crumbling salt dough ones, I could finally have a grown-up tree, still with the unbreakable ornaments in case they started wrestling around the tree and knocked it over.

My kids grew up and went out on their own so finally, I started collecting glass ornaments, my first ones were clear hand-painted blown glass and then I started collecting vintage ornaments. I found a Christmas mouse pompom decoration that I hung from a bottom branch for the cat to play with, she swatted it around when she walked by but didn't touch any other decorations, just hers. We have always had cats so needless to say, tinsel is taboo on our tree so I have acquired a lot of crystal prisms from old chandeliers to hang on the tree. I can"t put anything edible or chewable on the bottom of the tree so that the dogs will leave it alone, no cookies, no wooden ornaments, no pompom ornaments, no popcorn, but I still hang candy canes up out of their reach for the kids.

I enjoyed it for one year, then the grandchildren started arriving and I had to change how I decorated the tree, the glass ornaments were put out of reach and I found some pompom reindeer and hung them as well as some vintage brushed aluminum bells and vintage plastic balls that I had. I hung all of the chidrens' crochet ornaments, teddy bear, snowman, toy soldiers and some photo frames where they were visible to them and it looked nice.

As my grandchildren are growing up, they make ornaments for the tree as well. I have had a blue construction paper snowman adorning my tree for a few years now and I hang miniature birdhouses that they painted surrounded by some bird ornaments I have, they really like that.

I usually get one new special ornament for the tree, I have a snowman with shells on it that I got the year we lived by the lake, I have a Hallmark Dumbo that the kids like a lot, it looks like a soap bubble. Last year I bought an ornament at the craft fair, five penguins, and I had the grandkids' names put on it and they loved it.

I am in the process of putting my tree up this week and I am finally getting around to putting the ornaments on the tree. There are so many. I think I'm going to have to start putting up more than one tree so that I can use all of my ornaments.






Ancestral Notes by Earline Hines Bradt is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Canada License.