Mom's Christmas Tradition

When I was young, I had little appreciation for the traditions that my small family took part in during the holidays. Until I was about 13 years old, my household consisted of my mother and me, along with various pets I convinced my mother to let me keep. The size of our family made absolutely no difference in the size of our holiday spirit, however. Christmas dinner, leaving cookies for Santa, and gift shopping the day after thanksgiving were among our many traditions.

Perhaps one of the most unnoticeably important traditions to me was a small thing my mother was always sure to do. Every year after we put the tree up, my mother refused to let me commence any tree decorating until she found the little frayed and threadbare gingerbread man ornament in the back of her closet, and placed it near the top of the tree. The thing was obviously hand sewn out of some cheap brown material. Only one of its eyes, made from small beads, had withstood the beatings of being packed in and out of Christmas storage over the years. I would run back and forth between the boxes of ornaments and the tree, blissfully adding dangling adornments with no wonder of what meaning the old dingy gingerbread man held to my mother.

Finally, during the holiday season when I was 9 years old, I asked my mother why she was so intent on such an unattractive ornament being the first to go on the tree every year. She told me a part of her childhood that I had known very little about. I always knew that my mom's family had some money trouble when she was young. My mother told me about a Christmas they had when things were particularly tough.

Her mom, who died when I was four, was out of a job, and could hardly afford to keep food in the kitchen. She refused to let the lack of money ruin their Christmas. My grandmother searched the linen closet for any kind of material that could be spared. In order to decorate the tree that year, she spent most of the month of December that year hand sewing ornaments from the scrap linens. This feat took patience and diligence that only a loving mother could posses.

The gingerbread man was the only ornament from that Christmas my mother could still find. My mother placed that gingerbread man on the tree first every year to keep the memory of her mother alive. When she gives it to me, I will do the same for her.