As a little girl, I was always reminded of Christmas coming by the lavishly decorated Christmas trees displayed in the Marshall Fields shop windows. But throughout my childhood, one thing puzzled me about those trees: I couldn’t understand why all the ornaments were for sale. Sure the carefully designed trees were beautiful with their matching sets of ornaments and contrasting garlands, but I was confused about how those decorations would fit into the hodgepodge of homemade, handed-down ornaments that I assumed covered every Christmas tree. See, I came from a crafty home where all the ornaments on the Christmas tree were family heirlooms, handmade gifts, and crafty experiments. There were a few store-bought ornaments that had been given as gifts, but most of the ornaments we hung on the tree had stories behind them.

Decorating the Christmas tree was (and still is!) my favorite day of the Christmas season. We set the scene by making hot chocolate with marshmallows and blasting Christmas music throughout the house. My mom would produce boxes of ornaments from some mysterious place in the basement, and as we unpacked and hung each ornament we would remember who made or gifted it. Some of my favorites were the sequined Wizard of Oz characters my mother had sewn as a child and the empty walnut shells my grandmother had painted to look like strawberries. Every year there were a handful of ornaments my mother deemed hideous, but we never got rid of them. We just hung them on the back of the tree facing the wall, as if they still deserved the honor after all their years of service. Our tree was nothing like the glitzy confections we saw in department stores, but it meant something. The ornaments gave me a connection to my family and an appreciation for folk art — a sense of heritage and culture that was uniquely mine.

I’ll soon have a family and a Christmas tree of my own, but none of the ornaments I remember from my childhood. I’m still not planning to buy one of the sets of colored glass spheres or delicate ceramic figurines encrusted in glitter. I’m going to slowly populate my Christmas tree with handmade ornaments so that someday my kids will know that every ornament hanging on our tree was something i spent time on and cared about, so that someday when I pass them on to my children, I’ll be passing on memories and meaning in something tangible. It’s not too late for you to do the same! Start making handmade ornaments today and you’ll already have a nice collection by this Christmas. You can get hundreds of ideas for Christmas ornaments on AllFreeChristmasCrafts.com, or you can make them using craft kits.

This week we have a collection of new beaded Christmas ornament kits on CutRateCrafts.com. Make a set of Christmas fairies or candy canes with your children and then hang the ornaments on the tree as a memory of the experience. Use the wreaths or angels with crosses to teach your family about your faith. Bead a poinsettia or an angel for a dear friend so she will remember your friendship every time she hangs the ornament on her tree.

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