{"id":294,"date":"2019-12-24T14:12:26","date_gmt":"2019-12-24T21:12:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/janetcrum.wordpress.com\/?p=294"},"modified":"2022-12-30T17:54:01","modified_gmt":"2022-12-31T00:54:01","slug":"christmas-past-with-krylon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/janetalcorn.com\/staging\/1364\/2019\/12\/24\/christmas-past-with-krylon\/","title":{"rendered":"Christmas past–with Krylon"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"christmas_ornament\"Note: A version of this piece first appeared on my garden blog three years ago. I\u2019ve mostly retired that blog to focus on this one, but I hope to share a few pieces from it\u2014and from other past blogs\u2014on here from time to time. I\u2019m busy preparing for a long-awaited holiday road trip, so this seems like a good time to recycle something from the past. I hope you enjoy it.<\/em><\/p>\n

Christmas is one of those times when past and present converge in a strange time warp. Memories haunt this time of year, resurrected by the familiar sights, sounds, and scents of Christmas: happy memories we try to recreate for our kids and grandkids (often at the cost of our own sanity) and sad memories of loneliness, dysfunctional families, or loved ones no longer with us. The ghosts of Christmas Past and Christmas Present blur together in a muddle of memory and emotion and nostalgia. It\u2019s no wonder people drink a lot this time of year.<\/p>\n

But this isn\u2019t going to be an essay on the joy or heartbreak of Christmas or (heaven forbid) how to do Christmas right (damn you, Martha Stewart!) Instead, I\u2019m going to share one of my Christmas stories with you, the first memory of Christmas I have. So come on in, find a comfy chair, and join me for a visit to my Christmas Past.<\/p>\n

The first Christmas I remember was when I was somewhere between 4 and 6 years old, so sometime between 1971 and 1973. We lived in the country in Northern California, and we were, ahem, dirt poor (garden jokes = dad jokes with dirt, not to be confused with dirty dad jokes). I don\u2019t remember the presents I got that year, though I\u2019m sure there were one or two. What I do remember are the ornaments. My mother bought a dozen royal blue Christmas balls, and those were the only ornaments we had. So my mother, being the creative problem-solver she was, decided we would make more. We cut up styrofoam meat trays and some other sort of packaging we had lying around, glued bits of eucalyptus to them (California, remember? Not a lot of evergreens where we lived except for juniper), and coated the results in silver spray paint. A Krylon Christmas! See? When I describe myself as a California redneck, I\u2019m not lyin\u2019.<\/p>\n

Somehow my parents had found the money for an artificial tree, and that year it was festooned with blue globes and silver eucalyptus meat tray parts. Awesome, huh?<\/p>\n

The last of the blue balls (ho ho ho – I said, \u201cblue balls\u201d) broke about 20 years ago, but I still have a few of the Krylon-coated meat tray ornaments. There\u2019s a picture of one of them at the beginning of this post. Here are some more:<\/p>\n