Nostalgia

As I started thinking about a blog, I thought I’d show you our Christmas decorations. In looking at pictures, though, I realized that this year’s decorations look very much like last year’s…and the year before that. What it’s more about is the meaning behind each part of our display. Many of our ornaments go back at least to 2010 and a few have a history many years before that. My sisters may remember this one.

The bulbs were blue when I first remember them in my parents’ window on the farm. I don’t know when they started being part of Christmas, but I remember driving in the driveway when our kids were small and seeing these lighted candles made me feel like I had come home. Here, we have five tall thin windows on the end of the living room and this candelabra has a place of honor in the middle. Almost all the other windows in the house have these battery powered ones that come on before dark and go off about bedtime.

In front of the dining room mirror is my collection of nativities.

The large one with the angel on top is the oldest. It started in a time when my sisters were young marrieds with small children. Mother bought each of them the stable and then a figurine or two each year. Of course, she couldn’t leave me out, so I got the same thing. I remember having it in my bedroom at Christmas. By the time we got to the last king, the gray kneeling one, the papier mache ones were no longer being sold at Duckwalls, so he is plastic. The little blue ceramic set came from a church friend of mine. I think everyone in our Sunday school class had one of Judy’s nativity sets in one color or another. Judy has been gone for 30 years or so, but is always remembered when that comes out. The others are things I have picked up at Branson or other places over the years.

The two little angels in the upper left are from our second or third Christmas as a married couple. Dime store purchases, but valuable to us. We scrimped and saved then for something that cost less than a dollar, I think. Candles placed in the holders in front of them make their little faces glow. The china cup with the cardinal came from my long time boss and it make my face light up!

This year I retired one ornament, a glass heart given to us 32 years ago by our friends Jim and Linda Anderson. It says 25 years together, but this year is our 57th married Christmas.

Since we lived in Liberty for 8 1/2 years before we made our park model our winter home, our tree is too small for the ornaments we now display. We started collecting Hallmark ornaments in the 1990s when we had a huge tree in our house on 21st St. They are mostly birdhouses/feeders except for the church. The Best Friends bear came from who else? Our best friends Johnny and Karen Schmidt, along with an eagle carved out of an antler in honor of our Silver Eagle bus.

On the other side are the vehicle set. They make me smile!

The tree does have a few ornaments, but the most sentimental are a snowflake and a Christmas tree tatted by LeRoy’s Aunt Tressie. When she was too blind to see to crochet, she could still tat because she did it by feeling the knots as she made them. They are beginning to fall apart, but I think our kids have had one or more at one time, too.

It’s always so much fun unwrapping each ornament and remembering, not so much fun when the time comes to put them away at the end of the holiday. The wonderful thing, though, is that Jesus doesn’t get put away until the next year. He is the gift that keeps on giving throughout the year.