Fragile boxes connect to memories too precious to alter

There are few things that tug harder at my heartstrings than opening up the boxes of Christmas this time of year.

I nearly wrote “Christmas ornaments” in that sentence, but our boxes (and I’m betting yours) contain much more than merely the baubles that will end up on the tree.

In fact, they are so saturated with memories that it’s a wonder I have the strength to lift these containers each December.

I’m the third of four generations of sentimental packrats who have lived in this house. By default, I’m the guardian of the collection — the keeper of the nostalgia.

A more practical person with a harder heart would have discarded many of these items long ago.

Here’s the obstacle.

When I take out our pair of cardboard candy canes that are covered in aluminum foil and wrapped with red ribbons, I don’t see worn holiday décor. I imagine my grandma’s hands finding just the right place to hang these, as I do each year.

The spindly aluminum letters that spell out “M-e-r-r-y C-h-r-i-s-t-m-a-s” and “H-a-p-p-y N-e-w Y-e-a-r” long ago became too fragile to use.

But in my mind they will always be as beautiful as they were when they were tacked to the wall in 1958 as our parents celebrated their second Christmas together — and their first in their newly completed living room.

A worn pasteboard box held closed with a rubber band houses four small china angels that were not only made in Japan, but purchased there by our mother during her adventurous years abroad in the 1950s.

Those angels are a Christmas miracle of their own.

I hope I am not jinxing myself by saying this, but into their seventh decade they have yet to be broken … or even chipped. They are making their 65th annual appearance on the fireplace mantel this year, nestled among “clouds” of cotton almost as old as they are.

You are probably too classy to decorate with garlands of plastic holly and poinsettias, but I am not — my strands of it are older than I am. Standing on a teetering stool while wrapping them around the dusty set of longhorns over the fireplace is part of the tradition at our house.

My brothers — either by neglect or because they are too practical to be burdened by the trappings of youth — left their childhood stockings behind, so each year theirs and mine end up in a row on the fireplace screen.

Crafted in the early 1960s from colorful felt, they were made with love — so much love — by our dear friend Bobbye Woodul.

All three stockings are red and are festooned with colorful felt decorations: trains with button wheels, Christmas trees with shiny bead ornaments, a snowman, an angel outlined with sparkling golden sequins.

As with most of our collection, there are signs of age. Some of the button wheels are broken. The snowman waves with only one arm and is missing an eye. The angel has shed a few of her sequins.

Some years as I unpack these treasures, I consider doing repair work, but that never happens.

It’s the fragile boxes and the missing sequins and the faded ribbons that tie the new holidays to the old … a connection too precious to alter.

Betty Williamson is humming carols and trimming her tree. Reach her at:

[email protected]