Oh Tannenbaum – Travel Memories Decorate Tree

My lovely wife and I decorated for the holidays yesterday and our Christmas tree made its triumphant return after a five-year attic hiatus.

It took us longer than I expected to decorate the tree. As we unwrapped and hung ornaments we found ourselves reminiscing. When we travel to a new city, we buy a Christmas ornament so each and every decoration that adorns our tree is attached to a special memory.

Now our tree is an evergreen aggregation of the journeys we’ve taken since we married 10 years ago. Some of our St. Nick knickknacks are quite pretty and others quite cheap; but each one, whether a plastic piece of junk or carefully-crafted handmade treasure, reminds us of a place we’ve been or a person we met along the way.

I remember the cozy little shop right on Edinburgh’s Royal Mile where we bought our Scottish bagpiper and the huge department store on Beijing’s Wangfujing where we fought through a crowd of shoppers for a bit of Beijing Christmas bling. We have a lace ornament from Brugges and Buddha from Kamakura, a cardboard cutout from Mostar’s Stari Most and a cruise ship from the Royal Caribbean onboard shops. The Eiffel Tower that graces our tree is actually a keyring.

Whether “made in China” or by an artist’s hand, each ornament and the memory that accompanies it is a part of our shared past. I can’t help but feel comforted by those tree trinkets and what they represent as they twinkle in the bright white Christmas lights.