Look around my home on Christmas Eve, and you’ll notice an absence of Yuletide perfection.
There is no miniature train set, the likes of which you’d see in a window at Macy’s. There is no 20-foot tree dressed in ostrich feathers and diamonds. You won’t see hundreds of twinkling lights adorning a circular staircase or waist-high pots of poinsettias running the length of a wall.
You may notice some darned fine Christmas candleholders, and a charming little snow globe and a sweet stuffed reindeer. All perfectly nice and festive enough. And all of it from a factory.
But you may also notice the other stuff. The stuff you can’t buy.
A couple of wooden Christmas trees, somewhat cracked and a little bit chipped. Made by a 10-year-old many years ago.
A paper star, now slightly ripped, completely faded, and missing most of its sparkles. Years ago, when someone made it in kindergarten, it was bright red and green and still smelled of glue when it was presented to me.
It’s far from gorgeous, but it’s beautiful nonetheless.
There’s a funny little clown hanging from the tree: a walnut body, pipe cleaner arms and macaroni eyes. There are elves made from clothespins and angels made from cotton balls.
There’s the wreath we put up each Christmas. More than a few years ago, a little boy in Grade 3 or 4 would have assembled it with pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, then sprayed it gold, and finished it with red ribbon. And proudly brought it home.
None of these have a price tag, but there’s no question they’re treasures.
They are, after all, the little irreplaceable things that are brought out year after year after year, and greeted like old friends, and placed in the very same spots. The wooden trees on the sideboard, the wreath on a kitchen wall.
It’s a collection, I must say, that’s treated altogether differently than the “good” stuff.
Should one of the ceramic candleholders fall from a table and smash, that’s OK. We’ll get another. Same if a glass bauble breaks or a string of lights fails. We can always get more.
But should the walnut clown lose a macaroni eye or a pipe cleaner arm, we wouldn’t dream of tossing him. In fact, he’d probably be more special.
And so it goes, year after wondrous year.
Tonight, we will keep with tradition. We will sit down as we have on Christmas Eves past, and we will admire the fire, listen to music and reflect on the beauty all around us.
