Reflections in a Glass Ornament

Reflections in a Glass Ornament
By Donna Lowich

Finally, the Christmas tree was up. Three days before Christmas, and all we had to show for it was a single wreath hanging on the front door.

While all of the houses in the neighborhood taunted me with their twinkling lights and intricate outdoor decorations, all we had managed to do so far was hang the wreath. And now, the tree was up and begging for decoration. We had been busy doing other things that seemed important at the time.

We’ve been busy, busy, busy. Busy doing a little of this, doing a little of that. Busy doing nothing, if you ask me. What we had accomplished was not immediately apparent to me or anyone else, for that matter. Despite my best intentions and plans, we were well behind everyone else in the “Christmas Decorating” category.

Well, at least, my son was home from college for the holidays, and would, I hope, help us decorate the tree.

It was a race, after all, and we were losing. And badly, at that.

What’s done is done--I can’t go back in time and change anything -- it’s just a fact I have to deal with, but this is what has caused my current state of panic -- a shortage of time and a plethora of things to do. Decorating the tree is the task at hand. No use moaning about the tardiness of the event. We have a lot of catching up to do.


With the decorations out of storage, the boxes were opened, displaying the same old Christmas ornaments we’ve used since our first Christmas together--more than twenty-five years of un- packing and re-packing these same decorations! I silently groaned as I looked over our collection of dull, faded, plain glass ornaments of red, gold, silver, blue.

Suddenly, I remembered how proud I had been on that first shopping trip out, and how beautiful I thought they were, that first Christmas! But that was then, and this is now, I reminded myself. They are not new and glitzy like the ones in my neighbors’ houses that I see on the way home from work every night.


Well, better get back to putting the hooks on these. They’re all I have, and I HAVE to use SOMETHING on this tree. Lots of bare spots to cover up. “That’s what we get for shopping for a tree so late,” I thought to myself, glumly. “We get to hang old ornaments on a left-over tree nobody else wanted.” And then, as if to make myself feel even worse: “Some Christmas this is going to be.”


My thoughts were interrupted by my son, Jeff, who came into the room. and offered to help with the decorating. “We can use all the help we can get,” I thought to myself. But aloud, all I said was, “Here. Take these ornaments that have hooks on them already, and start decorating--thanks, honey.”


He picked up several different colors, and walked over to the tree. “Where should I put this one?” he asked, turning to me. I gazed at the ornament he held in his hands. Instantly, I was transported back to a time in my distant past.

It was still Christmastime, perhaps fifteen years earlier, and I was still right here in the living room. Speaking was my son, asking the same question, only this time, it was repeated in his little-boy voice, his huge brown eyes shining with excitement. “Where should I put it?”


“Right there is good,” I had said back then. He placed the ornament on the tree, quickly followed by another, then another. His excitement was contagious. I now remembered what Christmas had felt like back then--the excitement, the magic, the simple beauty of Christmas.

Gone were the pressures of the holiday preparations. Gone was the envy that had propelled my every move earlier that day; those feelings were replaced by the simple remembrances of Christmases past. I came back to the present just as quickly as I had left, with the excitement and warmth of the season still welling up inside of me.


Now the three of us were all decorating in earnest. As the faded old glass ornaments reflected the flashing lights that had been strung on the tree by my husband, Walter, during my reverie, they didn’t seem so old anymore. They didn’t seem so plain anymore, or as faded as I had thought.

The tree actually looked pretty good now. We started putting on some other decorations we had also collected over the years. There seemed to be a story with each one. We began to tell stories of what we remembered about previous Christmases, and about when or why we had gotten a particular ornament. What one of us had forgotten, someone else filled in for the others. We laughed, we cried (a little), but mostly, we enjoyed ourselves.

Jeff, without saying a word, went upstairs, rummaged in the storage closet, and came down with yet another box. Opening the box, he dug out some more decorations. These, too, had been with us for nearly as many Christmases as the dull glass ornaments. But, these were special. These decorations had been made by gentle little hands, by Jeff when he was in nursery school and in kindergarten.

Christmas had held a very special magic on many levels for him, and for all of us, back then. I imagined Jeff as a little boy making the ornaments.

I saw the excitement in his sparkling brown eyes, and sensed his anticipation as he pasted alternating red and white cotton balls on a cardboard cutout of a candy cane.

Tears blurred my vision of him as he quietly put the decorations--HIS decorations--on their rightful places on the top branches of the tree, just as he had done when he had first brought them home from school those many Christmases ago--only this time, he didn’t need any help reaching those branches.

Returning to the box, he dug into its very depths and retrieved a small nativity scene. From the time he was able to do so, he had always considered it to be his job to set up all of the tiny figurines in the manger. It was a beautiful and fitting finale to our Christmas tree decorating festivities. I guess sometimes new decorations don’t make the measure of the old. Sometimes, like now.

That was what my son was telling me, telling me oh, so clearly!

So, all these years later, with our lives going in so many different directions, Christmas was just like it used to be. We were all at home, laughing, talking, enjoying each other’s company, remembering and caring.

Remembering and caring. This is what Christmas is all about!

I used to know that. “What’s happened to me? How did I --how could I--ever have forgotten that?” I mused to myself. Unsure of whether I could answer that, all I was sure of now was that it had taken a late start, old decorations -- maybe it would help things if I start to think of them as heirlooms -- and most importantly of all, my son, to teach me this lesson. This time, I learned it for keeps because I had lived it again--I had been given a second chance.

Good health had kept us whole as a family, and we had God’s blessing to celebrate yet another Christmas together. There was nothing else to ask for, nothing else to want. Nothing under the Christmas tree could top that. Ever.

The scrawny tree bearing the old decorations that had transported me across time had also been transformed into a majestic holiday symbol, all the while serving as an exquisite reminder of the lesson that had taken me so long to learn: that Christmas is so much more than what one is able to merely see, and that this, the richest of all lessons can be taught by using the least likely of tools, and that it can be taught by the youngest among us.

Word Count: 1369