I was visited by the "Ghost of Christmas Past" today. No, this was not some spirited being but rather a flood of memories of long gone Christmas seasons. Since it was a rainy day here on the Bayou, Son and I thought that it might be the perfect time to do a little of that decorating for the holidays. We pulled out many, many boxes of decorations. I have accumulated far too many decorations over the past years thus making it difficult to settle on any one "style" of adorning the Little Bayou House. Perhaps it was time to start discarding some of these ornaments and other decorations. As I opened box after box, I realized this was easier said than done. Each item that was pulled from a box had some sentimental string attached to it. There were the gourd ornaments that Mark and Joanna brought back from Arizona. There were the handmade ornaments from Elizabeth and Robbie several years ago. There was the "stained glass" ornaments that were made by Michael when he was in the third grade of elementary school. Ornaments from Mom and Pop's house, decorations from aunts and uncles, decorations from grandparents and great-grandparents all packed in boxes..all waiting to be unpacked. I have things from so many folks and so many places.
Some of my favorite things were placed in a small display cabinet. These are all antique treasures from Christmas Past. Most are light bulbs from early electric Christmas lights. I have no clue whether these things will even light up but they are just too pretty to toss. It was hard to choose from the hundred or so light bulbs and vintage ornaments in the box. I only had so many spaces in the small cabinet and so many treasures that I wished to display. These were from a time when pride was put into the creation of even things like light bulbs. The detail in some shaped like birds is unbelievable! Also in this little cabinet are eleven small porcelain bells of my mother's. I always remember her carefully taking them from their box and stringing them on a long ribbon. This was then strung in a doorway between the old farmhouse kitchen and the huge living room. Why there are eleven escapes me. I assume at one time there were a dozen and when my siblings and I were tykes, one was broken. Probably at the hands of one of us kids. The largest mercury glass ornament in the cabinet always fascinated me with its swirls of colors. Several other antique ornaments fill the rest of the cabinet. These are treasures. If this was all of such treasures that filled the boxes, I would have room to spare but alas, it is not. There are so many that I sadly would never be able to display them all. Many stay stowed away in boxes.
My adventure in walking down memory lane made me think of little book that I found last Christmas. That, too, was on a rainy time here on the Bayou. Wishing to settle in with a good book, I went to the book shelves to select a suitable volume to read when I discovered a small version of the "A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens. It had somehow been removed from its place with the other books on the shelf was sitting on the shelf near the Christmas Tree. For the life of me, I could not remember ever seeing the book before. How it wound up placed on the shelf near the tree was beyond me but it was the perfect bit of reading on a cold, windy and rainy Christmas Night. Another "Ghost of Christmas Past"...another keepsake that is to be found among the weird and wonderful treasures of the Little Bayou House.
