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Oh, Christmas Tree!


This year we started what I hope will be a new Christmas tradition for our family. On the first Sunday in December, we invited our immediate family around for brunch and to help us decorate our Christmas tree.

Now, I am all for beautifully decorated, colour co-ordinated trees but I realised that once children are involved it becomes more about sharing a special tradition which fully includes them rather than how the finished tree looks. After all, Christmas as a celebration is extra special in so many ways once children are involved – their excitement, wonder and joy are truly infectious!

So we decorated our tree with lots of silver and red baubles and then came my favourite part of dressing the tree – adding a special collection of individual ornaments which Dad 101 and I have collected over the years. Each of these ornaments has a special association, a little story to tell – of a place we have visited, an event to remember, or a person we know. I thought I would share just a few…

This silver disco ball is from the night I first met Dad 101. There were hundreds of them hanging in the venue where we welcomed in the new millennium. We met not long before midnight struck.
This decoration I made at my grandparent’s house when I was a child. It is made from a cotton reel, ribbon, ric rac and a bell. My grandma kept it for many years before passing it on to me for my own Christmas tree.
This is the first of quite a few that we purchased on our trip to the states in November/December 2002. It is a beautiful wooden ornament which we bought at Macy’s in San Fransisco. They had the most amazing Christmas tree decorating ideas, all themed and representing everything from ‘under the sea’ to ‘fairy fantasy.’

From the multi-storey M&Ms store in Vegas.
A handmade ceramic bauble from Mexico which we managed to carry around for five weeks of travelling without breaking!
From New York, small Statue of Liberty figurine which I made into an ornament.
From my trip to the UK in 2005 with a very dear friend.
From Devonport in Tasmania, where we spent Immy’s first Christmas celebrating with her Dad’s family.
This one Immy chose on our recent visit to Singapore.

And this one I bought this year to add to a collection for Immy, for when she leaves home one day and starts her own Christmas traditions. I love the number 9 (which is meant to represent 9 Ladies Dancing from the 12 Days of Christmas song) as it is perfect to remind me that it is the one we bought for her collection in 2009!Do you have special ornaments which you hang each year on your tree? What do they represent to you and your family?

Christie Burnett is a teacher, presenter, writer and the mother of two. She created Childhood 101 as a place for teachers and parents to access engaging, high quality learning ideas.

Filed Under: Holidays & Celebrations

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Read the comments or scroll down to add your own:

  1. Elise says

    December 20, 2009 at 4:00 AM

    Ornaments that tell a story and have a history are so special. It's like taking a trip down memory lane every year when you hang them on the Christmas tree.

    It's so special that your Grandma passed on the beautiful ornament you made when you were a child. Your mexican ornament is almost like a lucky charm - that's amazing that it survived the trip in one piece.

    We also have ornaments that we have bought each year that remind us of a significant event from that particular year. Now that Savvy has started making ornamets and decorations I think the look of our tree is going to change significantly over the next few years and I can't wait to have her decorations (as well as Blakie's and Tic Tac's) gracing our tree.
  2. Deborah J. Stewart says

    December 20, 2009 at 5:21 AM

    The ornaments that my daughter made are the ones I treasure most. For awhile I collected musical instruments - I hoped to have an entire tree filled with them but I didn't do a very good job at keeping it up:)
  3. Michelle says

    December 20, 2009 at 10:10 AM

    Lovely, such special decorations - ornamental.
  4. Kelly says

    December 20, 2009 at 12:13 PM

    I LOVE Christmas trees that are not all colour co-ordinated but are represented by memories of times past, like yours. x
  5. Fern says

    December 20, 2009 at 12:49 PM

    Beautiful. I love the phonebox!

    Our Christmas tree is here - There was no way I was keeping two babes out of the tree, so we went very kiddie friendly!
  6. Michelle says

    December 20, 2009 at 2:28 PM

    I love your special ornaments. We have first Christmas Ornaments for the girls. When I was little, my mom always made sure that we got to put our first Christmas ornaments on the tree. Even as we got older and may not have been home to decorate, she always left those off for us.

    I also love the ornaments that we made together, they are special to look back on!
  7. Infant Bibliophile says

    December 21, 2009 at 5:14 AM

    Love this post and the whole idea of ornaments representing special memories, people, places, etc. Our tree is a hodge podge of handmade things and ornaments representing memories like yours too. I was thinking recently that it might be fun to take photos of each ornament, right a little sentence or two about where it came from, and print them in an inexpensive book. My son, while young, can play ispy with it, hunting for the ornaments on the tree as he sees them in the book, and later it will just serve as a reminder for me. I probably won't do it, but I think it seems like a fun idea. :)
  8. Anonymous says

    January 12, 2010 at 10:59 PM

    Thanks for the informative information - I enjoyed reading it! I always enjoy this blog. :) Cheers, childbirth-videos-to-watch-online.com
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