Ours is slightly mysterious: we own a bunch of little lead figurines. Old folks walking to church, ice skaters, a cute couple, kids throwing snowballs. We also have a couple of cars and houses, and a lot of trees. We used to set them up with a little electric trainset running around until owning pets put an end to that idea. The weird part is that somewhere along the line we also purchased a little metal figure of a black panther. It’s the right size for the others, but no one can figure out who bought it or where.
Makes Christmas in that town a lot more interesting for visitors when you put it in an alleyway between two houses with a little red paper and a toddler statue lying nearby, though.
It is a sound activated plastic daisy with Christmas trim that wriggles to the beat of music. I’ve had it since the dawn of time and have no idea who bestowed this gift on me. Every year we switch it on for awhile to see it shimmying hysterically to the beat of Christmas tunes, and it cracks us up every time. I enjoy my elegant and tasteful Christmas decorations too, but there will always be a place for our Daisy.
In 1986, my husband left his blossoming career as an attorney in a Georgetown law firm so we could say “screw yuppieville, we want adventure!” His secretary - a lovely person who only pretended to be a yuppyie-law-firm-secretary-type so she could pay the bills - made us a handmade Christmas ornament which we took with us to Micronesia, where we moved when we said “screw it.” It was a clear glass globe decorated with ribbons and tiny silver balls.
During our first Christmas in Micronesia, a local bug somehow got inside the clear glass globe and died.
We loved the ornament before the bug died in it, because we really liked the person who gave it to us. But the dead bug added a really special je-ne-sais-quoi. Every year, it goes on the tree, and every year we inspect it to make sure the dead bug is still there. (It is.)
I have a handmade map of the world ornament that read “Raping the Earth” I was given it as a secret santa present my first year working in the oil field. It always goes in a prominent place on the front of the tree.
My mom’s most cherished nativity set (which used to go under the tree, but now goes on the mantle out of the dog’s reach) is made up of a bunch of fancy sculpted and painted figures passed down from her grandmother… and a greenish pig crudely shaped out of kids’ modeling clay. I’m not sure which of my sister or I originally made it when we were kids, but it’s been re-made a few times since when one of the pawed denizens of the house has gotten into it. There’s absolutely no way we’d ever put up the scene without it.
We have one of those ceramic figures with the electric light inside, shaped like Frosty the Snowman. He has green glass eyes and smiles like a lunatic. The effect is absolutely terrifying. He spends most of the year packed in the attic in a cardboard box labeled “Frosty the Devourer of Children and Destroyer of Souls/Handle with Care”.
We have four cute little blocks that I set up to spell, “LEON”. People sometimes point out that they could be rearranged to spell “NOEL”, and I act dumbstruck. “Oh my god. . . you’re right!!”
I have a few little hollow doll arms/hands that I’ve been sticking on the tips of the Christmas tree branches for 25 years. People seem to find them weird and creepy.
In and of itself, my motion activated singing Santa isn’t remarkable, but the effect it has on my pets is. Even though they have seen it every year, for years now, it causes a paroxysm of barking every time it goes off. They run around the house looking for the phantom singer. And it never gets old. They do it over and over and over. It should probably annoy me, but in all honesty, it makes me giggle. So of course, Santa has to come out every year. He made his appearance this last weekend, and I’m sure the neighbors must think I’m conducting fox hunts in my living room by now.
