Christmas 2020 was the first I have ever spent away from my family in Ohio. As a result most of my Christmas traditions revolve around that week or so that I would normally have been at home. Left to my own devices I don't do much to decorate or personally celebrate the holiday. There is a lot of communal celebration, parties and church services etc, but my apartment doesn't usually reflect the season. Often helping to put a few more ornaments on the tree when I arrive home is the only decorating I do for the year.
So this year, having decided to stay in Boston because of travel restrictions and health concerns for everyone involved, I started drawing ornaments one night. Every family Christmas tree is a little different, but in my family the tree is all nostalgia. Every ornament that actually makes it out of the box is chosen because its someone's favorite. Most can be traced to a specific person who gifted or made the ornament and many are also decades old. We often don't even bother with the more generic ornaments, just picking out the favorites and spreading them around the tree.
When I started drawing ornaments I started with a few favorites that came to mind. There's a strange plastic monkey covered in a soft furry layer that my dad found on his way home from work one night. It wears a sash, a huge pink hat and holds a large plastic rose in both arms with a look on its face as if its objectively happy or in love. The weirdest little ornament, found in a gutter, is the one everyone wants to hang each year. My great grandmother made a lot of our ornaments and one of my favorites is a plastic canvas Rudolph whose head is an empty cube that holds a piece of candy you can find by squeezing on its cheeks. The list goes on.
Eventually my drawing led me to reach out to friends and family to share their favorite ornaments or even just ideas for ornaments they would like to see. Each story is a little different...the ornament their siblings fought about for the privilege of hanging; those made by children and grandparents; the one attached to a memory. More than one friend told me their families hide a tiny pickle ornament on their tree to be found in a search...it turns out this is a German tradition. I had a long conversation, including many texted photos, with my family so the ornaments that speak to me of Christmas are very well-represented. I also traced all my Christmas cookie cutters, a gift from one of my sister's last year that is just a sample of the larger family collection, and turned those into full characters.
In a odd and often disconnected year, any point of connection holds a little more value for me. Being able to reminisce with those close to me (even though they are far away) over long-held memories that get renewed each year when an ornament is removed from its storage box was a highlight of this year's Christmas.
