Decorating for Christmas

Do you know how many times a small, beautiful glass ornament can bounce on a tile floor before it breaks? Fortunately, we don't either!!! Today as we began decorating the tree, one beautiful frosted blue glass ornament dropped and bounced and bounced and bounced..... Butch and I waited with bated breath for that shattering sound, but it never came. As I retrieved the ornament and as we examined it and thanked our lucky stars, the rush of pleasure that comes with decorating came back full force and on we went to continue putting ornaments on the tree. Each ornament has a story and so many have a history. Decorating each year brings smiles and tears as we remember and celebrate friends and family who made so many of our decorations or who "gifted" us with beautiful treasures. Some of the ornaments go back to 1962 when we decorated our first tree in Canner Hall at Yale Divinity School. We have hand painted ornaments my mother and I made, handmade ornaments by talented artists and friends in Lawrence, Radko ornaments from a flurry of collecting years ago, Hallmark ornaments collected over many years, Macy's papier mache ornaments, Mary Engelbreit ornaments, metal ones from Texas - there's even a barbed wire star - sparkly strands of silver and gold and crystal and frosted white, beautiful handmade glass ornaments, and wooden ones of all types. Oh, yes, we do all of this to the sounds of the first Mannheim Steamroller Christmas CD and other Christmas music favorites. What we see and experience in all of this is a whole lot of love woven through the history of our life together.