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Treasure
Last year – 2005 – I didn’t put up
a Christmas tree for the first time in forty years. I had a good excuse
but I also thought I was done–done with decorating for Christmas,
that is. I was so convinced of this I gave my oldest daughter most
of my decorations. I kept back my silk poinsettias and a few candles
and the trinkets I use to bedeck the mantle. I also kept my box of
Christmas ornaments. I don’t know why. I think I told myself
that I would divide them up later and distribute them among the kids.
I figured they’d want the ones from their childhood, especially
the ones they had made with their own chubby little hands. Yes, this
is what I told myself. But really I just couldn’t part with them,
not yet, even if I wasn’t going to put them on a tree again.
Of all my worldly possessions, I’d have to say that this box
holds the things that I’d call treasure.
Never say never.
This year I had good reason to put up a tree again. The
day I pulled out my box of ornaments and began unwrapping them and selecting
the perfect spot to hang each one, I experienced a familiar warm flush
of joy–that old feeling I used to have when the kids were little
and Christmas was at hand. I don’t know why now exactly that I
loved Christmas so much then, though the appropriate answer should be
about Christ’s birth, but since I celebrate His birth, life and
death every day of the year, the date on the calendar designated by
man as His birthday holds less significance. In fact, over the years,
as our family has matured and scheduling became an issue, we have celebrated
Christmas as early as December 11th and as late as December 29th. No,
it’s not been in regards to anything special about December 25th.
When the kids were little and we were smack in the middle
of throbbing family life, Christmas was always a challenge for me. We
barely had enough income to cover a normal month, so meeting the extra
demands that gift-giving and additional food and frolic brought required
not a small amount of creativity on my part. Making Christmas happen,
with all the sparkle and fun, the good smells, tastes, and newly-forming
traditions meant that I had to pull out the stops and use every resource
I could muster. One year I took a part-time job in retail. Big mistake.
Live and learn. The year I made dolls and sold them was grueling but
I was truly grateful to have the means. But, in retrospect, as difficult
as I recall it all being, there wasn’t a single Christmas that
wasn’t full of memorable bliss, though some were better than others,
this truly was not determined by the amount or quality of the gifts
we exchanged; it was about the things we did, as a family, school activities,
pageants, caroling, parties, driving around looking at light displays,
cookie baking, and the exquisite luxury of being out of school for two
weeks.
One of the best of those memorable activities was ornament
making. How could we have known the creative time we spent together
constructing
things with paste, glue, glitter, plaster, paints, wood and paper would
still be giving joy forty years past their creation? How could we have
known
the little rolled paper candy canes that five-year old Sean made would
still be around to hang on a tree that his daughters
would gaze at and touch thirty years later? Could we have foreseen
that the green handprint
and poem four-year old Holly made would match the hand of her son?
Or the cross-stitched words on the little stuffed pillow that Rachel
made in her Camp Fire group would one day reach across decades to wish
her
children “Merry Christmas”? You can’t know, at the
time, that you are making long-term treasured moments. You do them
and then sometimes you get lucky, I guess.
It used to make me incredibly sad when the time came
to take down the tree. I
really dreaded it. It wasn’t merely the chore it represented but the reality
of a special, happy time coming to conclusion. For some reason, knowing it would
happen again the next year wasn’t much consolation. But today, when I undressed
the tree, I wasn’t sad this time. I think I was even a bit shocked that
removing each precious ornament, wrapping it and snugging it back into the box
was more like a rite of passage than an ending. Christmas is different now that
there
are grandchildren, at least from my perspective. To be sure we made ornaments
this year and these works of art take their rightful place among the elder ones
in the box, but I know the time for this collection is waning and surpringly
enough that’s
okay. The new families will make their own treasured moments in their own chosen
way but time has a way of bringing some things to finale as it chugs
forward. The true treasures in this box can never really fade anyway so long
as
even
one of us remembers how they came to be.
Matthew 6:19-21 tells us not to put our focus on earthly
treasure:
“ Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth
and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; but lay up for
yourselves treasures
in
heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break
in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." So,
I know that one day these old ornaments will finally crumble and at last succumb
to the ravages of time, but for now, they
still
hold great meaning, not of themselves
or the worthless materials from which they are made, but of the precious
time well-spent bringing them into being. This is genuine treasure
then, how we use
the time we have been given, and cannot reclaim or do over. There are so
many ways to squander valuable time, so many ways to justify ignoring how fast
it
slips out of our
grasp. These handmade ornaments are simply physical reminders of the conscious
choices we have made to share in love and happiness and that continues beyond
the scope of man-made perceptions.
This year, I will add one more thing to the box before
I tape it up. I will print out this essay because who knows what next
year will bring? Maybe 2007 will be like 2005 and I won’t put
up a tree at all. And if the next time this box is opened, even years
from now, is by someone else, that’s okay too, I’ve surely
had my share of pleasure from the contents of this container, more than
any rare or cherished collection could possibly give. But I would want
that person to know exactly what real value hides in the tissue-wrapped
objects waiting to be discovered.
So I thought I’d put it in writing.
