©2016 by John LaTorre
This is a picture of a Christmas
decoration that has been in my family for almost sixty years. After this
Christmas season, I’ll be giving it to my grandniece Olive Flemons, who is
three years old, and I’ll be enclosing this letter with it.
Dear Olive,
I’m giving
you this Advent candelabra, which has been in our family for a long time. As
you can see, it’s not in the best shape, but maybe if I tell you a little bit
about it, you’ll eventually come to see it as the beautiful object that it is.
It’s old.
It was made before you were born, before your mother was born, even before your
grandmother was born. Your great-grandmother – my mother – bought it when our
family lived in Germany. She discovered it at an open-air fair called the “Weihnachtsmarkt”
which is German for “Christmas Market.” The fair was held every December in
downtown Frankfurt, and there would be lots of venders of Christmas ornaments and
handcrafted items and food. You could buy big gingerbread hearts with your name
written in icing, or gingerbread houses, or little cookies called
“Pfeffernussen” made of spiced dough and covered with powdered sugar or
frosting. Or, if you were hungrier, you could buy a grilled sausage and a roll
with mustard. If you were thirsty, there would be coffee or tea or hot cider or
hot apple wine (which was a specialty of that town). The whole area smelled of
gingerbread and sausages and wood smoke. It would probably have been raining, although
I remember a light dusting of snow one year. These markets have been held in
German cities for hundreds and hundreds of years, and go on to this very day.
How did I
end up with the candelabra? It happened this way: I received a box from my
mother about thirty years ago, which must have been around the time your mother
was born. Inside the box was this candelabra, and a note from my mother. Here’s
what the note said:
“Dear John
“Don’t know if you remember but we
got this Xmas ornament the first Xmas we were in Germany – at the Xmas booths
down next to the Main River. I want you to have this as one of your memories of
Germany. It’s very special to me so I want you to have it – Maybe when you’re
in your 60s it’ll be a good remembrance. Love, Mom.”
We moved to Germany in 1957, so the purchase
would have been in December of that year. The candelabra has been set up in
either my mother’s house or my house every single Christmas since then. I’m in
my sixties now, but soon will be in my seventies, so I think the time has come
to pass it on.
You will
notice, of course, that this ornament has not had an easy life. There are four
angels on it, each playing a horn of some sort. But the paint has chipped off
their heads, so they are all mostly bald now. And the candelabra has been
broken and repaired many, many times, either by my father or me, using whatever
glue we had handy. One of the angels has only one wing, the other wing having
disappeared long ago. Another angel is missing its left forearm, which must
have made it quite difficult for her to play her horn. But since angels are
supposed to be supernatural creatures, maybe a missing arm or wing isn’t much
of a hindrance to them. And it’s a reminder to me that many people with missing
parts turn out to be angels, too, so you shouldn’t be too quick to judge them
on their appearance.
This damage
is typical of something that has seen so many moves (ten of them, at least) and
so many miles of travel. In fact, I estimate that it has traveled about
twenty-four thousand miles, crossing the Atlantic Ocean five times, and then
down to Florida, and then to California. That’s the same number of miles that
it takes to go completely around the world! And that doesn’t include the many
times it’s moved across town, or from one town to another within California.
Not many angels have traveled so far, or so often.
I suppose I
could clean it up a bit. It still has some splotches of glue on it, and a
little dust. But I don’t want to create any more damage than it already has,
and even the dust tells a story. It could be German dust, or Virginian dust, or
Floridian dust, or Californian dust. Who knows?
There are
four arms on the candelabra, each with its own candleholder. The four candles
are for the four Sundays of Advent. On the fourth Sunday before Christmas, the
first candle would be lit. The next Sunday, another candle would be lit, and so
on until the last Sunday before Christmas, when all four candles would be
lit. (Of course, some of the earlier
candles would be burned down by then, so they’d be replaced, so that there
would always be a proper number of lit candles.) We would always use red
candles, although green candles would be appropriate, too. Or maybe both red
and green, or white. You can use whatever you want, since it’s your candelabra
now.
It’s hard for
me to look at the candelabra without thinking of your great-grandmother. Like
the angels, she had a few parts missing when she died, as your mother or
grandmother can tell you. She was a strong woman, although she kept most of
that strength hidden. It would come out mostly when defending her family. For
example, I’m left-handed. Back when I was a schoolboy, there were still people
who thought that people shouldn’t be left-handed. One of them was a teacher who
insisted that I learn to write using my right hand. When my mom heard about
that, she came down to the school and told the teacher, in the strongest words,
that I could write with whatever hand I pleased. She said that God made me that
way, and God surely knew what He was doing. That teacher never made me write or
draw right-handed again. I’m sure your mother or grandmother can tell you many
more stories about her and about what a fighter she was when she wanted to be.
She was a
beautiful woman, as this picture shows. And you can see that she loved her
family fiercely. She loved me and my brother and your grandmother, and she
absolutely adored your mother. She would
have adored you, too. And that’s why I felt that it was right and proper for
you to have this gift from her, and from me. She would have wanted it that way,
knowing that a young lady like yourself would keep her memory alive and carry
the tradition on into the next century.
So take care
of it, dear. It may not look very pretty to you now, but it will become a
little more beautiful each year. Trust me on this. (If you don’t believe me, ask my sister or
your mother; they’ll tell you the same thing.) And maybe someday, if you have
children of your own, you can tell them stories about your family, and about
your great-grandmother, and of all the people and places these little angels
have seen.
Love,
Your
great-uncle John
