An Ornament Story: Gaston

For the next 5 days I will be sharing stories about some of the ornaments on our family Christmas tree. Like many of you, we have carefully chosen the ornaments over many years, and so many of them have special meaning to us.  I am going to tell you some of the memorable stories that go along with these classic Christmas ornaments.

In 2003 we were living in Tampa and had celebrated a wonderful Christmas.  The day after Christmas the youth of Wesley Memorial UMC left early in the morning to begin the drive to West Virginia for our ski retreat.  Marilyn, Will and Conner were left behind.  It was our first Christmas with the dog.  I was driving along (somewhere in Georgia, I believe) when my cell phone rang. Marilyn was hysterical- and angry.  It seems that the dog had tackled the tree, knocking it to the hard tile floor and leaving smashed ornaments everywhere.  Some of our collectible Disney ornaments were broken beyond repair.  I was "dead meat" for not being there.  She couldn't pick up the tree to set it upright, and she was frustrated beyond words. But from the rubble, a tradition was born.

We had a set of Beauty and the Beast ornaments that we dearly loved, and many of them suffered damage.  We were able to glue the Beast back together, but others were lost.  And then there was Gaston.  Gaston lost a leg in the calamity.  But we kept him.  And the following year when it came time to decorate the tree, we decided to hand one-legged Gaston on our tree. And he has been there every year since!

We love our special ornament, and we still love the dog too.  While I was a bit surprised to discover he was still alive when I got home, that was the last time he ever messed with our tree.  Now he just sleeps under it like he is a present.  And the smashed tree is just a part of our Christmas narrative.

Join me tomorrow to learn about another ornament- The Christmas Pickle. :)

Merry Christmas to All!!!