Every year I open the Christmas decorations box with a mix of fondness and trepidation.
My grandma’s glass baubles are hibernating inside.
They were bought after the war, then handed down to my mum, then me.
They’re just simple globes, a couple of the fancier ones with frosted patterns. The claret and purple glass so thin now it’s almost see-through.
Some years, just lifting them from their newspaper nests is enough to shatter a fragile shell, and I’m down to the last stragglers now.
But every December, I put on some festive music and I hang the survivors on the tree, along with all the other mismatched trinkets I’ve collected since.
And while I’m ham-fistedly festooning, I remember nights when I was trusted to place these same baubles on my grandma’s sparkly silver 70s tree.
I remember Spangles in the selection box, a new Morecambe and Wise on the telly and the annual jaunt to Crieff with my other gran to buy a frock for all those parties.
And for a time, all the people who I miss feel closer than they do at any other point in the year.
Decorations are the stuff of childhood memories
There’s no time like Christmas to make us cling to our traditions.
It probably explains why the Dundee Christmas lights provoked a mini-outcry this week.
They’re different. Fun. A little bit irreverent, as befits Dundee’s reputation as one of the world’s coolest little cities.
But to hear some of The Courier’s Facebook commentators, you’d think the city council had killed Santa, run off with his reindeers and ruined Christmas for everyone.
Aaron Andrews, whose company Arro is behind the display, said people had complained they weren’t like the ones in London’s Oxford Street.
“That’s fair comment if you want to see something more traditional,” he added.
“We’re a bit more rock and roll – and not everyone is up for that.”
The thing is though, the little kids looking up at the twinkly Desperate Dans and Oor Wullies proclaiming “Jing! It’s Christmas” and “Have a rootin’ tootin’ time” aren’t caring about that.
They’re just seeing something glittery and exciting at that age when Christmas really is the most magical time of the year.
And maybe one day they’ll take those memories out and treasure them when they’re as old and grey as us.
A Christmas for new traditions
I suppose I’m feeling extra nostalgic because we’re having a different Christmas this year.
My mum won’t be here to decorate the tree, forget the bread sauce and carefully wrap our giant Toblerones, as if there was ever any doubt about the contents.
So we’ll have to start some new traditions instead.
My aunties bought me a Christmas angel at a craft fair, and I’ve hung her there, alongside my grandma’s baubles and my mum’s cast-off tinsel.
And next year, I’ll take her out of the box and remember the year we all picked up the pieces and raised a glass to the missing place at the table.
There’s probably going to come a year when I shatter the last glass bauble.
And I’ll probably scoop up the fragments and put them somewhere safe instead, because we’re sentimental creatures, us humans.
But I’m grown-up enough now to understand that Christmas isn’t about the trimmings. It’s about the people we share it with.
And there’s nothing to stop us taking those memories out and treasuring them any time we like.
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