Grand Prize Winner, 2003 Edition

Ann Paulsen

When my late husband and I were first married, we rattled around in a high-ceilinged, freezing flat in a town just outside Manchester, England. We managed to get a good-sized tree for our first Christmas (the kind fellow selling it even delivered it to our door), but we had little money for ornaments. I tied some strips of colourful fabric to a few branches, and a friend at work made a little bow from some pink ribbon, then I went to the local Woolworth's for one store-bought decoration - a cheap plastic angel painted gold. Our tree had a rather sparse look about it, but we enjoyed Christmas nonetheless, and for every Christmas that followed I bought one ornament for the tree. When our children were born, I decided they shouldn't have to start "bare," as we had, so I began acquiring one ornament for each of them, too, along with the one for us. Sometimes I made the ornaments, sometimes I bought them; the year my husband died, I made little wreaths with flowers I'd saved and dried from the funeral. My son is now in Montreal, and in the parcel I sent him for his first Christmas away from home, I tucked in his shoebox full of ornaments, plus a new one; one day my daughter will take hers with her, too. And now the new man in my life gets to take part in our Christmas Eve ceremony of unwrapping the little package containing the ornament for the year. I wouldn't want a "theme" tree or one based on a specific colour - I'll never tire of decorating, with years' worth of memories, our own family tree (where the little pink bow and the tarnished plastic angel still hold pride of place).