Christmas is a time when everyone in the family gets together to decorate the tree and have a nice time. Every family has its own Christmas tradition. In this story, a mother began a new Christmas tradition and was heartbroken years later. Read the entire story and hope we all learn something valuable.
“Can I have this one, Connie?” my ten-year-old stepson, Conan, asked in reference to a Christmas ornament I was unpacking. It was the second Saturday before Christmas and Conan was visiting us for the weekend. We had just brought our freshly cut Christmas tree inside the house and my husband had lugged several boxes of decorations from the basement. Our four-year-old son, Chase, along with Conan, was helping me unpack them. Our one-year-old daughter, Chelsea, was watching intently from her playpen.
We had several “special” ornaments. I wasn’t certain a ten-year-old child would appreciate the intricacies of hand-sewn beads and sequins on the Santa ornament, or the fragility of the painted sand dollar from our favorite beach vacation spots. Some of the ornaments held special memories of the people who made them, or the places we had visited while on vacation. I wanted to keep them and protect them until he was older.
Besides, if I let him have one now, I might never see it again.
Suddenly I got a bright idea. “Conan, how about if we start a new tradition?”
“Like what?” he asked.
“How about this: every year we will buy you a new ornament. You can use a permanent marker to write your name and the year on it and we’ll keep all of them together here, in a box. And then when you’re eighteen years old, you’ll have lots of special ornaments for your own tree.”
His smile told me he liked the idea. I handed him an ornament of a miniature Christmas storybook and he immediately clasped it in his hands, enthralled by it. He took it to the couch and flipped through the pages of the tiny, two-inch ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas book, pleasantly surprised by its cute size and by its timeless endearing message.
Bright for his age, I should have anticipated his next question.
“Well, how about this?” Conan began, with a pensive look on his face. “Since I’m already ten, how about if I pick out ten ornaments now, one for each year I’ve been alive, and write my name and a year on them? That way I’ll have eighteen ornaments, one for each year, for when I’m grown up.”
By now I had hung up all the fragile ornaments. I dug out the box of unbreakable ornaments, tickled by his quick thinking. I sat the opened box in front of him and said, “Sure, go ahead and pick out ten.”
Conan’s face lit up as he carefully carried the box to the kitchen table. He very slowly and intently made his selections. And just as carefully, he printed his name and a year on his prized ten, each representing a year in his young life.
For the next couple of years we remembered the pact and my husband and I purchased an ornament for him, but as he entered his teenage years we all forgot.
And then, in the middle of his seventeenth year, on a beautiful day in May, the unthinkable happened; Conan was killed in a car accident.
The first few months following his death were a painful blur—we went through the motions of living. The grief counselor warned us that the holidays would be especially difficult and he was right. I don’t think any of us tasted the turkey at Thanksgiving, and I, personally, struggled with giving thanks that year.
Normally, at the first sign of frost, I would get excited about Christmas. I’d start singing Christmas carols and pull out my favorite recipes so I could bake cookies and freeze them for gifts. But that year it was all I could do to go through the motions of decorating the house for the holidays.
Chase and Chelsea, who by now were eleven and eight, were not interested in helping decorate the tree, obviously struggling, too. So, late on a Saturday night after my husband had put the tree in its stand and everyone was in bed, I lugged up the trimmings for the freshly cut tree, including the boxes of ornaments.
After first checking all of the strands of lights to see if they worked, I carelessly flung them on the tree. Then I pulled out the stepladder and climbed the few steps to the top of the tree, gingerly attaching the angel to its designated place of honor.
I turned to the box of fragile ornaments. I quickly unwrapped the timeworn beaded and sequined Santa ornament along with the sand dollars and others, going through the motions of hanging the ornaments so I could quickly get it over with.
As soon as I had emptied the box of my favorite fragile ornaments, I turned to search for the box of inexpensive ornaments. As I did so, I suddenly recalled an excited ten-year-old. I swallowed hard.
Locating the box, I gingerly lifted the lid, and right on top was the tiny little Christmas book ornament. On the front was the title, ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas, and on the back, scribbled in a child’s excited handwriting, was the name CONAN, in capital letters, as if to lay claim for all eternity.
I wiped the tears from my eyes and dug out the other dozen or so ornaments with his name on them. Some were handmade, some were store-bought, but they suddenly became irreplaceable to me.
Bittersweet memories comforted me as I realized that sometimes the traditions we end up treasuring the most in life have nothing to do with expensive fragile items. Rather, sometimes the most precious memories we can have are those involving ordinary items that have been forever touched by love.
