The box of ornaments comes down from the attic with the energy of an aging prizefighter. It knows this is its one bout of the year. It knows you will open it no matter how much dust has accumulated. It knows you will whisper a small prayer that nothing inside has shattered, even though you wrapped everything in tissue paper that looks like it survived a siege.
Open the box. Begin the annual negotiations.
A glitter snowman stares up at you. He sparkles with the confidence of someone who believes glitter is a personality trait. He was cute when you bought him. Now he looks like he should be paying rent. His smile is permanent. So is your confusion about why you keep him.
Next to him rests the macaroni ornament. A masterpiece from a child who is now an adult who texts you only when they need money. The pasta has fossilized. The glue has aged into a color that might be legally classified as mustard. You hold it as if it were a relic from a holy site. Your brain says throw it out. Your heart says you would be haunted forever.
You place it near the top of the tree. You do not know why. The tree does not know why. The macaroni does not ask questions.
Dig deeper. You will always find something odd. A knitted star that leans like it got into the eggnog early. A ceramic bear wearing a scarf even though bears do not shop seasonally. And the annual wild card. An ornament with no clear origin. You hold it up to the light. It reveals nothing. It exists in a state of quantum sentiment. You keep it out of respect for the mystery.
Hang it anyway. Pretend the tree understands.
A mitten appears. It whispers a memory. The grocery store. The panic of losing your child behind the cereal aisle. The relief when they emerged holding a box of cookies. The ornament remembers this. You do not know how. It simply does.
A paperclip ornament appears next. Why is this an ornament. No one knows. Maybe it was attached to something once. Maybe it carries a memory of a humming child. Maybe it is just a paperclip with holiday ambitions.
You hang it because the tree does not judge and neither should you.
Some ornaments hold joy. Some hold grief. Some hold the strange truth that time does not move in a straight line. Open the box and ten years appear instantly. Open it again and twenty more fall out. You begin decorating the tree and accidentally decorate your entire emotional history.
The tree becomes crowded. Not with objects. With versions of you. Old you. Slightly better you. Slightly worse you. You cannot hang them on the branches so they hover politely around the room, nodding as if to say yes that was a year.
The tree glows. It looks triumphant, but not because of the lights. It glows because everything on it survived something. A move. A heartbreak. A drop on a tile floor. A toddler. A dog. Another toddler. You.
Step back. Look at the tree. It has become an illuminated archive of everything that was briefly important and somehow still is.
There is a philosophy hidden inside holiday decorating. A simple one. A true one.
We keep things because they remind us we kept going.
The glitter snowman. The macaroni fossil. The knitted star. They are ridiculous. They are sentimental. They are survivors. So are you.
The tree stands completed. You admire it. It admires you right back in that quiet tree way. Nothing profound is spoken. Nothing needs to be.
The lights warm the room. The ornaments settle into their nightly glow.
And in that soft glow you remember the real holiday truth.
Memory is messy. Meaning is accidental. Love is whatever survives the box.
Brian Brijbag 