By Amy McGarry
It’s that time again! Even before Thanksgiving, in some stores, right after Halloween, the aisles are filled with a plethora of Christmas decorations. Some of you can’t wait to peruse through these treasures to add to your collection: new garlands to drape around your living room; a new wreath for the front door; lights with the newest technology, blinking, changing colors; or a whole new set of ornaments to match the color scheme for this year’s Christmas tree.
I love that finding the perfect, new decorations for your Christmas brings you excitement and joy.
Full confession: the only new Christmas decorations I ever bought were gifts for other people, and a single new ornament for the tree each year when my daughter was a child. That single ornament was always personalized for my daughter, with her name and the year, her photo from that year, or a fictional character that was her obsession of the year, from Minnie Mouse to Harry Potter. Other than these, my preference is always to stick with the vast collection of decorations and ornaments that I made as a child, and gifts to me, with the addition of my own kid’s handmade decorations.
This is my small attempt to create some Christmas memories for my child that my mom created for me. When I reflect on Christmases from my own childhood, believe it or not, I don’t remember opening gifts as much as I remember my fascination with the decorations that adorned our house and the joy they brought me.
My mom loved to decorate for Christmas. When I was a kid in the 70s, she had boxes and boxes full of decorations. As soon as we could get a tree, she’d pull out the lights and ornaments, and a variety of decorations, mostly handmade by her seven children.
Unlike people I know today, she never bought any new decorations, with one exception: tinsel. Or sometimes we called them icicles. If you are a Boomer or Gen-Xer, you remember tinsel. If you don’t know what tinsel is, it is foot long strips of foil that we would drape on the branches of the Christmas tree to mimic the effect of icicles.
You might also remember tinsel was difficult to save and even more difficult to clean up. It took forever to take the tinsel off the tree. Throughout the season, individual icicles would inevitably end up on the floor. They had to be picked up by hand because they were a nightmare for the vacuum. Tinsel isn’t recyclable and is dangerous for pets. All of these tinsel troubles are probably the reason that I don’t know anyone who puts tinsel on trees these days. But when I was a kid, it wouldn’t be Christmas without tinsel on the tree.
One of my favorite items to pull out of the boxes each year was the faux stockings handmade by my creative sister, Marcia. These were sock shapes cut from alternating red and green felt with our names in glitter glued on. Barbara’s was the biggest, because she was the oldest. They got progressively smaller with each sibling’s name. I loved that mine was the smallest. Baby stockings are cute and adorable like baby animals are.
When I got big enough to reach, my great joy was hanging them over the fireplace.
But I think my very favorite Christmas decoration was the candle. My mom loved candles and had many candles for Christmas that she never burned. They were for decoration only and for adorning the house year after year.
Her collection included a variety of sugar frosted candles with Christmas images on them. These were candles encased in a glass container, with a frosted finish to the exterior, which gave the appearance of being covered in a layer of sugar. To a child’s curious hands, they also had the texture of crystal, sugar coating, providing a delight to my sense of touch.
But nothing could compare to the delight of the touch and magnetism of the candle. We didn’t have a name for it. I thought it was unique to our family. Thanks to Google, I found out “it’s a thing” – a traditional Christmas decoration. Now I know the candle is called a Christmas Family Drip Candle. Me and my siblings of all ages loved it.
It was made by using a glass bottle as a candle holder for a taper candle. Burning the candle, the wax was allowed to drip down the sides of the bottle and harden. Then another candle of a different color was added to do the same. This was repeated over and over.
Those dried drips of wax were irresistible to children of every age. To this day, I can’t explain why picking at that dried wax was so satisfying, but for me and two of my older sisters, we had to be sneaky picking at that candle or there would be trouble.
Funny thing, and kind of sad, nobody remembers exactly how our drip candle started. And nobody remembers who made the Christmas Kissing Ball from Christmas cards. My mom always hung plastic mistletoe at the entrance, between the living room and kitchen, much to my chagrin. I found it awkward and embarrassing to catch a sister smooching with her boyfriend under the mistletoe. One year, the Christmas Kissing Ball was hung in lieu of the mistletoes. Like the candle, I thought the kissing ball was unique to our family. Again, thanks to Google, it wasn’t. Maybe you had one in your house.
As I reflect on the decorations of Christmas past and consult with my siblings, one thing becomes very clear: there are some answers that neither Google nor AI can give me. They can’t tell me who started the candle or who made the kissing ball, or answer many more questions I have about Christmases past.
I wish I would have thought to ask these questions when I was young, when everyone in the family was younger with fresher memories, when my parents were still alive.
So this year, when we pull out my box of Christmas tree ornaments, I will take some time to share with my daughter. I will lovingly address each ornament, made by me or gifted to me as a child, saved by my own mother and passed down to me. I’ll tell her about the terrible winter of 1978, when we were snowed in and my mother kept me entertained with making ornaments. How my mom taught me to sew and embroider by making ornaments. I’ll show her the Hawaiian Christmas tree ornament decorated with little shells and starfish, and explain about the distant relative who cherished me and brought it to me from Hawaii. I’ll show her the ornaments I bought for her for her first Christmas, and how special it was for me to have that memory.
Maybe this will be the year we make our own kissing ball. Better yet, I think it’s time we started our own drip candle. I think I might even have to buy tinsel for the tree this year, just for old time’s sake.
Amy McGarry grew up in Spokane Valley, Washington. After a 20 year hiatus, she moved back to Spokane Valley where she lives with her husband, daughter and two cats. She is the author of I am Farang: Adventures of a Peace Corps Volunteer in Thailand available on Amazon.com, Auntie’s Bookstore, and Barnes and Noble.