Tuesday, December 20, 2016

A Present for my Grandniece Olive


©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

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