If the Ghost of Christmas Past had visited me a few days ago he would have given me a lashing for sure. I didn’t have the festive spirit of days gone by. Gone was my excitement for decorating the tree, baking those star-shaped sugar cookies my family loves, putting out the holly hand towels in the downstairs bathroom (even if they do have “Bah Humbug” embroidered in green silky thread). Just couldn’t imagine conjuring all that good cheer out of thin air, and it was nowhere to be found in my heart.

But rituals die hard, so the other night the fam headed out to find the perfect Christmas tree, and lo and behold, we actually found a beauty. We brought it home, hauled the ornament boxes from the garage, opened them up and the kids dug right in, started decorating. I was reaching for the shiny new disco-ball ornanaments I had bought in coordinating colors last year for 50% off, when my son announced, “I say we only put ornaments on that are special, that mean something to us.”

“Yeah?” I answered, and put down the disco balls reluctantly. I was hoping a little bling would help bolster my Christmas spirit.

“I agree,” my daughter chimed in. I was outnumbered and they had a certain unarguable point.

And so for the next hour or so we went through several boxes of ornaments and picked out ones which fit the critera for meaningful or special: handmade, given to us as gifts, obtained somewhere memorable, that kind of thing. The gold spray-painted macaroni star picture frame Abby made in 2nd grade. (“Awww….Remember that haircut?” we laughed)

The popsicle stick picture frame covered in green spray-painted macaroni Zach made in preschool. (“You picked out that outfit yourself that day!!”)

The hand folded origami a teenager made for me at a church in Boise where I sang last Christmas. (see above)

The clown with moving arms and legs made by Nicaraguan children we visited with World Vision a couple of years ago. (“They had so little…and the dances they performed for us!” we told our kids again, who weren’t able to make the trip with us) The hand painted glass ball given to me by a student I loved dearly.

Each one we hung had a story, and we told those stories as we decorated the tree. Not in a Lifetime Movie Channel “gather ‘round kids” kind of forced way. Just sort of naturally….joking as we went, getting choked up from time to time (ok, maybe just I did, but i think my kids were a little nostalgic, too)

And I will say this: there is something to remembering. The Ghost of Christmas Past did well to drag Scrooge around to watch scenes from happy years gone by. I felt my frozen heart melting like candle wax while we decorated that tree. And you know what I did the next day? I found those Bah-Humbug hand towels, washed and put them out. I baked a pumpkin spice cake, I decorated my fireplace mantle with sparkly things and fir tree boughs. Not out of a sense of duty….but because I just felt like it. I’m ready to make a few more memories.