Day 18: Christmas Ornaments

I never wanted a Christmas tree, ornaments, or decorations for a holiday I only celebrated out of custom.  The first year we had a home together, my mother-in-law bought my husband and I a set of ornaments. Tucked inside three tiers of plastic in a gingerbread house shaped box, were ornaments crafted to look like sugar cookies and candy. My husband made the mistake of pointing out the fact that we didn't have a tree on which to hang them. As soon as we were back in Massachusetts, my mother-in-law showed up at our apartment with a Christmas tree. "This will be the easiest tree you ever put together," she said. "You don't even have to sting the lights." She made us take it from the box and stand it up in our living room. As soon as she left it became the easiest tree we ever took down.

In its long box, the tree took up an entire half of the large white cabinet in our hallway. By December, I'd decided that if the tree was going to take up so much space, we may as well stand it up in the living room for a week or two.

That first Christmas with the tree was during the days before our marriage started its rapid descent. For fun one night, we went to Michael's Arts and Crafts to buy ornament making kits. We sat at the kitchen table and hot glued snowmen sleighs, pom-pom penguins, and jingle bell mice. We each created our own stocking with glitter glue, patches, pins, and stickers.  We bought each other ornaments of cartoon characters and TV shows like the ones pictured above.

Although I grew up in Boston, I've always hated the Red Sox. At first my father instilled his hatred for the team in me as a child, then my own grudge formed after they directly caused the fast food restaurant I'd worked at from 15-19 to close down. After we had the Christmas tree, my mother-in-law continued to buy us ornaments.  One year she bought a Red Sox World Series special edition glass ornament for my husband who loved the team.

The second Christmas that we stood the tree in our living room, my ex-husband came home drunk one night and punched the tree to the ground. I heard the glass shatter from the other room and came to calm him down. After I'd righted the tree, picked up all the ornaments that had fallen off and scattered all over the floor, I discovered that the only ornament that had shattered was the glass Red Sox ball hanging toward the tree top.

A few months after my husband left me, his girlfriend posted pictures of their Christmas tree adorned with home-made ornaments. He'd cut a star into a beer can and placed it on the tree top. I was filled with so much anger-- he'd been with her before he'd left me-- that I wanted to pack up all of our ornaments and the tree I never wanted and drop them on her doorstep. Instead, I kept it all shut away in the white cabinet and I shoved the anger down deep inside. As I let go of the ornaments, I know that I will be lifting away some of the anger triggered by these pieces of plastic.