It’s difficult to play favorites. But my favorite Christmas ornaments are those which mean something specific: the ones collected on trips and adventures, those given me by friends, and those which hung on my grandparents’ tree.
A brief history (photos below):
1. Our chosen home. (And where my husband proposed.)
2. Senior year in college, Spring Break trip with my cousin and my dear college friend to visit my aunt in Alaska. My friend gifted me this: of course we’d skiied (cross country & alpine) and sat in hot tubs. #alaskaforever
3. The copper wolf I bought myself at age 26, in a tiny town in Montana, where I was a writer-in-residence at the Montana Artists Refuge (a gift of a month which changed my writing life).
4. My babies. Aren’t the preschool ornaments killers?
5. Lady Liberty, got at the Ellis Island Museum at the Statue of Liberty National Monument in New York City, where my sister and I traveled with our mom to celebrate her 70th birthday.
6. George and Martha! From Mount Vernon, where I took my older daughter as part of a special, big-kid Spring Break when she was in 4th grade.
7. Ornaments from Colonial Williamsburg—the King’s Tavern and Governor’s Palace—from an after Christmas adventure with my in-laws. They gifted all of us the trip, and it was a ball.
8. A Nordic star, from Epcot’s Norway Pavilion, and an unforgettable Disney trip with my parents, sister and her family (a Christmas gift from my parents to all of us).
9. A birthday gift (I’m a Sagittarius) from a dear friend, which entreats me to “listen.”
10. Two ornaments, old and precious, which hung on my grandparents’ tree. One of them spins from the heat; as a child I’d crawl as far as I could get under their Christmas tree and stare up into it, fully believing in magic.