Christmas involves a lot of “stuff”. There are Christmas ornaments, which seem to multiply every year. There are stockings, cards, and special wrapping paper. There are gifts to be given, and some of them might have been handmade by your grandmother. These heirlooms are a physical representation of family stories and family history, and are of special importance to a genealogist.
I have several Christmas ornaments that were handmade by my grandmother. I remember watching her make some of them. There are angels made out of some kind of white, braided, craft rope, which was unraveled to make the skirts. Each angel has it’s own halo, made from a pipe cleaner, and a wooden bead for a head, with a pretty, hand drawn face on it. I also have several dozen snowflakes ornaments she made, in a variety of styles. They are white, and I remember helping her cut out designs from the plastic screen-like material she was using, and then watching her do a cross stitch pattern of her own design to complete the snowflake.
There was a year when my grandmother spent a lot of time in and out of the hospital. She grew up during The Great Depression, and had a habit of saving things that a person of a younger generation would throw away. Every time she was given medication, she saved the little plastic cup that it was dispensed from. Later, she used those plastic cups to create Christmas ornaments. She used styrofoam balls that were left over from another craft project, and decorative pins that had beads on the top. The pins were used to secure the cups to the foam ball, and she added large sequence in between the pin and the cup. I remember one year, she made enough of these to hang from the ceiling all the way down the hallway in our home. When I look at this ornament today, I remember stories about how creative she was, and her talent for making beautiful things out of little odds and ends.
I read an article today that reminded me of my grandmother, and the Christmas heirlooms that she created. There is a grandmother in Georgia who makes hand knit Christmas stockings. She starts in January, and knits one special, and individually decorated, Christmas stocking for each family member. She has also made a few for friends of the family as well. She has been making these handmade Christmas stockings for fifty years, which is really impressive. It makes me wonder if there are lots of other families out there who have these kinds of special Christmas decorations, which are tangible reminders of family history, and family members who have passed away. What kind of Christmas heirlooms does your family have?
Image by Jo Naylor on Flickr