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Getting to the meat of Christmas symbolism
My
son Ian emailed me a picture of his Christmas decorations. I recognized most
of them, including the scarf and mittens I knitted for his first Christmas
that he’d draped over the mantel. Below them, on the heart, sat a little
semi.
“Where
did the little truck come from?” I asked.
“Every
year Kristen’s grandfather gives all the men in the family a Hess truck. I
just met him this year, so he gave me my first truck,” he said.
What
a nice tradition, I thought, to honor the interests or livelihood of one’s
grandparents with Christmas decorations. Not that we didn’t have
traditions of our own.
Every
year I gave all my boys (husband included) an ornament to commemorate a
significant event. Our family tree included little musical instruments
representing first piano recitals and the year my husband played his guitar
at our niece Donna’s wedding. The year Halley’s Comet came through and
the boys saw it at Fernbank with their great grandfather who was seeing it
for the second time is remembered with comet ornaments.
Some
years were more eventful than others and some years I had to rack my brain.
Like the year all I could come up with was that all three boys’ soccer
teams were named after snakes: Cobras, Pythons, and Vipers. It took a lot of
looking but somewhere up in North Georgia I actually found snake ornaments
that turned out to be kinda’ cute with little red bows around their necks.
And
as far as jobs go, I did acknowledge all my kids’ first jobs with an
ornament. For Ian, a keychain from Stone Mountain Park where he ran the sky
lift. For Leif, a lifeguard’s whistle. For Loren, a miniature Dunkin’
Donuts box.
I
got to thinking even more about our decorations and what any of them might
have to do with ancestral as opposed to individual interests. Ian’s
paternal grandfather worked for Arrow Shirt Company and every year the
administrators were given a baseball card sized Jacquard print of a classic
painting. My then mother-in-law gave me a stack of them which I fashioned
into coasters, sachet bags and even little purses for my then relatives.
Only the one for 1976, the year Ian was born, did I turn into a Christmas
ornament. What a gorgeous collection that might have been had I kept them
all!
And
then there’s my dad, the butcher. What do I do with that?
I
let my mind wander for a while, and then one day I happened upon little
cheese slicers shaped like meat cleavers. Perfect, I thought.
Of
course, friends are going to ask my boys why in the world they have a
butcher knife hanging on the tree, but hey, it’s no worse than my having
to explain three snakes.
122611
Susan
Larson is a writer who lives in Lilburn. E-mail her at susanlarson79@gmail.com
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