by Ethan S. Fogg
It’s a cloudy Saturday afternoon, and it’s time to take down and stow my holiday decorations. The process of “taking down Christmas” is just as important to my holiday season as caroling with friends and eating gingerbread cookies.
With no children in the house today and five cats captivated by small shiny things, there’s more risk than reward in trimming a big tree, but I still maintain a small trove of memories from family, friends and the occasional antique shop to adorn tabletops and windows.
Many of the glass baubles in my cache are from the trees that beguiled me as a youngster. I can still smell the Douglas fir that came home from Seneca Falls on the roof of our wood-sided station wagon and feel the oriental rug beneath my bare feet as my sister, brother and I gathered around to open presents. I remember just as clearly the ceremony – weeks later – of removing each decoration from the by-then-half-bald tree. As a family, we’d defend each decoration’s relative worthiness as a keeper, then place it in its time-tattered cardboard box or set it aside for charity.
Today, my small collection of Christmas items includes a handful of cards with notes from college friends, family and a few from ancestors I’ve never met. Wrinkled by handling and faded by time, the glad tidings in these cards ring clear after a year, 10, or in a few cases almost 100! While I’m packing boxes and sipping hot chocolate, I pack these with a few of the current year’s cards, reread a few notes from the past and commit to writing some friends to ring in the new year.
Next, I remove the stockings I hung above the fireplace. A McDougall by blood and an alum of luxury retail, I enjoy these classic tartan icons. The shape and size of a Christmas stocking is perfect for trinkets, small books and foodstuffs from holiday fairs or farmers markets. As a bonus, the cats find them boring. These are keepers for sure!
As in many recent years, I will stage my displaced holiday decorations on my dining room table and commiserate with my cats which ones are keepers. We’ll box most of the ones from my family. A few found and gifted. The rest of the collection matters, for sure, yet each year I honor my family’s tradition of setting some pieces aside for charity.
Among the handsome and the sentimentally important and the collectible, there are always a handful of items that lose their place in Santa’s workshop. It’s not because I no longer appreciate them. Quite the contrary. It’s because it’s the season of giving, and if you love something, sometimes you have to set it free…
If you’re one for day-tripping to antique shops or second-hand stores in the Finger Lakes, looking for your next keepers, perhaps you’ll encounter a few of my former keepers on your adventures. You’ll know them when you see them; they’ll look old, but handsome, and a little weary from their many years of faithful service.
