Tale of the tree

“Some Christmas tree ornaments do more than glitter and glow, they represent a gift of love given a long time ago.”

— English actor and writer Tom Baker (1934-)

Leave it to Baker, who famously played the fourth and longest-serving “Doctor” Time Lord in the BBC science fiction series “Dr. Who,” to wax eloquent about time when reflecting on the topic of Christmas ornaments.

And from personal experience with my own ornaments and Christmas tree, Baker knows of that of which he speaks.

I got to pondering Baker’s observation as I decorated my beloved artificial Christmas tree from Shopko last week, my first full-scale Christmas tree decorating spree after two successive years of blinging out the licensed Peanuts one-ornament Charlie Brown tree that I picked up at the Minocqua Dollar Tree a number of years ago out of an abiding fondness for the circa-1965 “A Charlie Brown Christmas” animated holiday TV special, which made its debut just 10 months after I was born. Needless to say, Charlie Brown and I go waaaay back.

“Charlie Brown is a blockhead, but he did get a nice tree.”

At the time I bought my Charlie Brown tree, little did I know it would become my primary tree for several successive up-for-grabs seasons in my life, last year out of necessity having just returned home to a minimally functional condo after a protracted fire restoration exile at a local hotel. Like it brought cheer to Charlie Brown, the sad sack but nevertheless persevering Christmas tree, bent over from the weight of a single ornament, brought me joy as well.

Back in my college days, one bleak and lonely December without home and hearth to lay down my sweet head, I drew on the Charlie Brown experience and crafted my own Charlie Brown tree in my dorm room with an empty glass Coke bottle and a discarded pine bough I found while bussing tables in the university student union in the days leading up to Christmas break. Be it ever so humble in its utter simplicity, a candy cane for an ornament, there have been few Christmas trees that I have found more profoundly moving. Thirty-eight years later, I still fondly remember that “tree” and the joy it brought me that bleak mid-winter. 

Fast forward to last week, and I was struck anew by the gift of love — and memories — of the Christmas ornaments as I unboxed them and hung them on the faux “Westlake Spruce” tree, which traces its history in the Johnson household to a 2014 purchase in the holiday season “Trimmery” shop at the old Eagle River Shopko Hometown store, since 2019 a fondly- remembered ghost of Christmas past.

Facing a milestone 60th birthday next year, I found myself reflecting on the many decades of ornaments as I unboxed them and hung them on the tree, each rich with its own memories of people, times and places past, all near and dear to my heart and central to my life and family history.

My Nana and Grandpa Art set me up in December 1965 with my first Christmas tree, my first ornament from Marshall Field & Company, and a scenic dresser-top village scene — white felt batting cloth snow, a white plastic picket fence, a tiny top-hatted snowman holding a “Merry X-MAS” sign, and colorful tiny paperboard houses.

My annual childhood Christmas ornaments were intertwined with a day of “Fielding” and a fine dining lunch in Marshall Field’s Linden Room restaurant at Mayfair in suburban Milwaukee.

As an adult, my annual ornament purchases were tied to the communities where I lived, places I worked, and a myriad of vacation destinations, all laden with memories in their own right as my mailing addresses changed to Illinois, Ohio and Wisconsin over the decades. 

A handmade ornament, part of office Christmas party festivities in my days at Milwaukee Magazine, is a reminder of my first-place win in a lively staff crafting contest, my ornament depicting me passing the time in my MilMag cubicle creating a chain of paper dolls bearing the visage of publisher Betty Ewens Quadracci.

Travel-inspired ornaments take me back to a variety of adventures — camping in Boulder Junction and buying ornaments at Christmas at Nana’s, and visiting distant locales across the U.S. to see the various sights in San Francisco, Colonial Williamsburg, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Norfolk, Baltimore, New Orleans and New York City.

And, as a parent, fragile homemade ornaments from my now-adult children still tug at the heartstrings as I hang them gingerly from the tree with care — manger scenes and stars from church Sunday School, photo-adorned construction paper mittens from their elementary school days, and years of Boulder Junction Christmas Walk Kids Day craft projects.

One ornament hangs special near the top of the tree underneath the tree-topping angel; a pair of tiny newborn-size socks that were never worn by our own little angel above, Samuel Christopher.

Every ornament on the tree has a gift and story of love, enough to fill a book, maybe even several volumes full. If this tree could talk — and in my heart it does.

Eric Johnson can be reached at eric@fyinorthwoods.com.