Christmas Stories

The Ornament that Saved Christmas
A true Christmas story

Many years ago when I was just a child our family celebrated Christmas just as most American families do. We had a big scotch pine christmas tree that Dad had purchased from a local grower. For weeks our house smelled like a beautiful forest. There were sparkling colored lights all around the windows and roof of our house and our neighbors houses too. When I was still just a little girl I always imagined that's what heaven looked like all year round.

Every year on Christmas Eve Eve Mom would fetch the ornament boxes from the cellar and gather all us children to decorated the tree. Me and my brother and sister looked forward to that traditional almost much as we looked forward to Christmas morning and opening presents. My older brother Billy was in charge of the lights. My younger sister Meg always got to do the tinsel. She'd throw it everywhere, but everyone just laughed and enjoyed the decorating. Mom would sneak after we'd all gone to bed and clean up the mess. Meg never noticed. None of us did until we were much older.

Now me, I was the ornament princess. Everyone got to hang some ornaments on the christmas tree, but I had the honor of the most special ornament of them all, Sammy's ornament. Sammy would've been the youngest of all us kids, but when Sammy was two years old he was diagnosed with leukemia. He was gone by the time he was three and a half.

As each of us were born, Mom had made a special ornament just for us. She'd buy a pretty colored glass ball ornament and some metallic paints and she'd paint our name and birthday on it and then surround it with a big heart shape. So Sammy's ornament was the most precious ornament of them all. I always hung it right in the front of the tree up at the top closest to the angel topper because that's what Sammy was now, an angel.

One year when I was only eight years old something amazing happened. It Christmas Eve Eve and our family was decorating our the Christmas tree just as we always did. It had come time to place the last and most important christmas tree ornament. Sammy's ornament. Billy pulled the step ladder as close as he could to the tree and helped me climb up it. When I got to the top, Billy still holding my left hand to steady me, my mother carefully handed me Sammy's ornament. I put it fine. I didn't drop it. But before I had a chance to get down from the ladder I sneezed. Knocking over the ladder, tumbling to the ground and bringing my brother Billy and the whole Christmas tree with me.

Everything was a tangled and broken mess. The tree branches were bent. The garland was torn. All our glass christmas ornaments were broken. All except one. Sammy's.

We disposed of the broken tree and all the shattered ornaments. We just hung Sammy's ornament from the ceiling with some pretty gold thread and put our presents under it. It was the best Christmas ever because we knew Sammy was with us. That he always had been and always would be.