The Ghosts of Christmas Past — Pamela Smith Hill

The same homemade centerpiece graced our dining room table Christmas after Christmas during my childhood: tiers of gold spray-painted pine cones glued together and stacked around a thick red candle. Artificial pomegranates added splashes of Christmas color. I thought the centerpiece was elegant and sophisticated.

In third grade, I thought anything embellished with gold spray paint was elegant and sophisticated. Case in point: the “vase” I made for Mom from a bottle of Joy dishwashing liquid covered with crushed eggshells. Thanks to gold spray paint, those eggshells looked like flecks of real gold—anyway they did to my third-grade self. Mom was suitably impressed and filled the vase with a bouquet of artificial violets.

Our Christmas centerpiece, however, was the handiwork of a skilled artisan, Carolyn Morrison. She had married my dad’s first cousin Donald, and when they moved to our hometown, our families saw each other often. One Christmas, perhaps the one when we moved into our new house in the country, Carolyn presented Mom with that centerpiece. It was beautiful, far more accomplished than my eggshell vase, and seemed to evoke the magic and wonder of Christmas—the shimmering pine cones, the glowing red candle, those exotic wax pomegranates. It presided over our Christmas gatherings for at least a decade. Then inevitably, the centerpiece succumbed to old age, and by the time I was in college, Mom had replaced it with a more modern arrangement of artificial red and white silk carnations.

But the memory of that pine cone centerpiece stayed with me, and as I arranged my Christmas centerpiece this season, I realized that it owes its existence to the one from my childhood. Like the original, my Christmas centerpiece is structured around pine cones. They aren’t glued together, nor are they spray-painted gold. They’re just piled up on top of each other on Nana’s antique cake plate. Dried hydrangeas from my garden, vintage Christmas baubles and ribbon, and pheasant feathers provide color and shimmer. So do a few gold spray-painted acorns (even as an adult, I can’t completely resist the allure of gold spray paint). My centerpiece is different from the original, and yet it’s also the same, a direct descendant from Christmases Past.

For me, this is the magic of Christmas—the generational continuity from one Christmas to the next, layer upon layer of memory taking new and sometimes unexpected directions. We embellish ideas from Christmases Past with new ones from Christmas Present. It’s hard not to be sentimental at this time of year.

Even when I seem to break the mold and try something different at Christmastime, the Ghosts from Christmases Past, to paraphrase Mr. Dickens, seem to be standing in spirit at my elbow. This year, for example, I broke with a thirty-year tradition: instead of driving out to an Oregon Christmas tree farm and cutting a fragrant Grand fir, I went to a nearby nursery to pick one off the lot. Weather influenced my decision. In the first place, the last two years have been hard on Oregon Christmas tree farmers. Their trees were damaged this year by a drought that extended from May through September, and last year by a once-in-10,000-year heat dome that sent temperatures soaring to 115 degrees. There wouldn’t be many seven-foot Grand firs to choose from. In the second place, snow was in the forecast for the appointed day to get the tree. It seemed wise to stay closer to home and try something different this year.

Getting the tree was a snap. The nursery, just a fifteen-minute drive away, was well-stocked with fragrant Grand firs. The staff even made a fresh cut and placed the tree in its stand. Then a pair of nursery elves—a young man and woman—carried the tree to the car and secured it on top of my Highlander. As they worked, the young man asked how I planned to decorate the tree. Did I have a special theme this year? Would I focus on a unique color combination?

To be honest, the question puzzled me. If my tree has a theme, it’s life—ornaments from my childhood, my daughter’s childhood, from friends and family who have given ornaments as gifts for decades. Then it occurred to me: the newest ornaments on my tree are the oldest. So I told him that two special ornaments would be on my tree this year—Mom’s childhood ornaments.

“They’re about ninety years old,” I explained. “German glass ornaments my grandparents probably bought at Woolworth’s or Kresge’s during the Depression.”

The young man seemed intrigued. “Wow! Ninety years old! What do they look like?”

I told him that one is a faded green glass pickle, the other is a small silver orb with a faded red star in the center.

“Is your family German?” he asked.

I shook my head, realizing that he didn’t understand the reference to Woolworth’s and Kresge’s. “During the years between the World Wars,” I said, “old-fashioned variety stores imported German Christmas ornaments and priced them so reasonably that even during the Depression, American families could afford to buy them for their Christmas trees.”

“I love all this history!” he said, shaking his head at the wonder of ninety-year-old Christmas ornaments. “This is the best Christmas tree story I’ve heard all day!”

I’m lucky that Mom’s fragile ornaments have survived well into the twenty-first century, but that’s part of the wonder of Christmas—past, present, and future. This kind of magic is both comforting and inspiring. And to paraphrase Mr. Dickens one more time, it’s why I continue to honor Christmas with a pine cone centerpiece and ornaments gathered over several lifetimes. The spirits of Past, Present, and Future still strive within me at this time of year.

Happy Christmas to you and yours.