Each December my parents would haul two aged, beat-up trunks out of storage and reveal the treasures inside. The trunks themselves were mysterious: one made of metal, painted black bent and dinged from travel across space and time, the other canvass covered with worn leather strapping. Written on the top of each trunk was a different address, one for a small town in New Zealand, the other for a small town in Muskoka, a few miles down the highway from where we lived. Both had journeyed with my mother when she emigrated from New Zealand in the late 1950s.
The contents of these trunks held much of the magic of my childhood Christmases. Contained in them were lights, ornaments and other decorations for the season. Sometime during my childhood, my parents grew tired of shed pine needles and keeping a live tree watered and purchased an artificial one. It was small compared to many I’ve seen in houses and stores now…maybe 5 feet tall. And the “needles” were a slightly sickly green and seemed more like plastic tinsel than anything approaching coniferous similitude.
As we prepared to trim the tree a stack of Christmas records would be stacked on the tiny RCA record player to set a festive mood. Anne Murray, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Johnny Cash and more all took their turns at reinterpreting various carols, but it was Tennessee Ernie Ford’s “The Story of Christmas” which interspersed sacred and secular stories of the season which got the most airplay.
We’d hang the mishmash of ornaments on this tree year after year, a motley assortment of gaudy balls and bits and pieces that had survived the various breakages and purges over the preceding years. Each of the three kids in my family were charged with hanging one of the three wise men ornaments, felted cones with crowns on top in red, yellow and blue. Somewhere in one of the trunks my Mum would find the Donald Duck wind chimes, complete with mistletoe and insist on hanging them in the doorway to the Rec Room where the tree was. It was an act of mischievous Elvin glee for her, watching throughout the season to see how many times my Father would forget it was there and ring the chimes, and as each of her kids outgrew her, watching their attempts to avoid it.
Returning to our living room, a few lights were put up and a mini-tree placed on the bookcase. It was the final item beside it that held the most wonder for me, a small, plastic creche, maybe 4 inches across, with worn paint and chipped edges. My child’s mind gravitated to this tiny panorama of the birth of Jesus and those surrounding him. We were not a church going family, not even at Christmas and Easter, but listening to the popularized retelling of the arrival of Hope in the world in the form of a small child renewed me each year, in good years and bad. That creche was perfectly imperfect, and I have never seen one more beautiful.
-Tim Versteeg