Our Fave Christmas Ornaments

When you downsize to a 1,000-square-foot condo and a three-foot-tall Christmas tree, you must be picky when choosing ornaments to hang at Christmas, especially when your collection spans nearly 50 years together. That’s a lotta ornaments.

Here’s our Top 10.

First, an ornament commemorating a golden time nearly 30 years ago not long after Ted and I moved to Atlanta from Nashville–the 1996 Olympics. We had so much company over those two weeks! We loved it.

Next, a true find on our 2023 visit to Scandinavia. It’s painted on the inside of the glass ball with brushes whose tips are bent at a 90-degree angle. Isn’t it beautiful? I love the shadows of the skaters on the ice (and the fact that the figures are two men enjoying their glide in tandem).

Below is the oldest ornament from my family’s collection. The brass bell, inscribed with INDI on the inside, was likely crafted in India. To the best of my recollection, it was a gift to my sister Marsha not long after her birth in 1943 in Buffalo, New York. Whatever the historic minutiae, I know it’s old.

And more bells! Here’s one of the first ornaments Ted and I bought together, probably for our first Christmas tree in 1978. Another set of bells broke years ago. This one we handle carefully, gingerly wrapping each bell with a piece of foam padding before sliding them inside one another and tucking them in their box for another year.

Yes, this baby is old, too. But a survivor.

Next, a nod to the upstate New York town where my dad spent his childhood. Roycroft was a reformist community of craft workers and artists who inspired the Arts and Crafts movement in the U.S. It was founded in the late 1890s by author Elbert Hubbard. Ted and I visited East Aurora, and Roycroft, in 2016, six years after my father’s death. Funny, he was with us all the way.

His spirit, I mean.

Here’s a tribute to Ted’s family: his parents’ Christmas card one year, probably in the 1970s. Designed to double as an ornament, it’s holding up just fine with a few Scotch tape bandages.

Speaking of Ted’s family, I love this ceramic Teddy-bear ornament, likely made by Ted’s mom or sister sometime after his college years.

Another fave: the Cape May lighthouse, purchased during a September 2017 visit there after a two-mile open water swim I entered in Lake Hopatcong, New Jersey. The water was a brisk 69 degrees. Want to feel newly alive, tingly all over? Dive right in! 🙂

Salvador Dali’s mustache slyly peeks through the branches from this ornament we bought when we toured the Dali museum with friends in St. Petersburg, Florida, also in 2017. We covered a lot of ground that year!

And finally, an ornament we bought when we visited our friend Jean-Francois Gilbert at his home in Montreal in 2017. On a bitterly cold winter day, we found it in the cozy gift shop of Montreal’s stunning Notre-Dame Basilica.

It carries this lovely inscription on the back.

To translate: The snow falls and covers the ground, with beauty and peace, for the sake of Jesus.

With that, I’ll close this sentimental journey, whether or not you believe in Jesus, whether or not you believe we all need to ditch our lovely ornaments and flee to Spain … or Portugal … or somewhere … or at least duck for cover from the division and chaos that will be sown with hair-raising relish over the next four years.

“The snow falls and covers the ground, with beauty and peace …”

May it be so.

Happy holidays, everyone!