Christmas Decorations

I love Christmas decorations! The vibrant magic they bring to this time of the year is so special and something to which I always look forward. Ever since I travelled to Germany for a student exchange and experienced a wonderful snow laden town with its windows lit up with the flickering of candles and shrouded in red and green, I’ve loved it!
 
Having said that, I must also qualify this with the fact that I don’t like the crappy tacky decoration people buy whilst shopping for their groceries and the sort of things people like to adorn themselves with at their work Christmas party. No, this is trash and I don’t like that in the slightest.
 
For me, Christmas decorations have depth and meaning. How does a decoration have depth and meaning I hear you yelling at your device?! Are you insane??? Well, possibly, but the jury’s still out on that one. Anyway, decorations, as with many other things people like to collect, derive meaning through the way in which you come to have them. If you did get all your decorations in aisle 17 next to the chips, dips and some plastic plates, then perhaps not, but if you’ve collected them from around the world, then they take on a whole different meaning.
 
A couple of years ago when I began travelling a lot more than I had ever done before, I started collecting Christmas decorations from all the places I visited. Since I didn’t want to waste money on pointless souvenirs that are great for five minutes, but once you’ve arrived home and shown everyone, it’s then put down and forgotten, often placed in a cupboard to gather dust. I have an entire collection of teaspoons and badges which has suffered this fate and is somewhere lost in the garage. However, unlike most souvenirs which suffer this fate, Christmas decorations appear each year! It might only be for a month, but for that month, all of those wonderful memories of travel and experiences you’ve had around the world, come flooding back.
 
For example, when I was in Japan a few years ago, it was really hard to find Christmas decorations. It’s not something the Japanese celebrate, but being a westerner, I was not deterred by their cultural indifference to this important festival that I thought they should have filling their stores and so was determined to find a Christmas decoration somewhere. I received many strange looks when trying to ask Japanese people without much English where I could buy Christmas decorations. What I thought would be an easy task, turned out not to be. I was told that the only place to find them would be in some western stores in the major cities. However, I wasn’t in a major city. They had snow, they should have Christmas decorations. It was like a pre-High King & Queen Narnia.
 
However, one day I decided to give skiing a break and went for a day trip to the seaside town of O, which is renowned for its seafood and glass blowing. Walking up and down the streets for hours, I finally came across this out of the way place where I had a delicious lunch of tempura prawns. Next to this restaurant, were a series of different glass blowing shops. After buying what I thought was a custard bun, which turned out to be an awful tasting black bean bun, I wandered through the glass shops, which had some astounding pieces of artwork as well as other beautiful and ornate glassware. Casually wandering through, looking at all the cool things I couldn’t afford, I came across a tiny shelf in one of the shops. It had about dozen tiny little glass objects in the shape of reindeer and a tiny Santa! I had finally discovered Christmas decorations in Japan!!!
 
Quickly buying them so no other sneaky westerner would take them before I could, although the chance of that was probably slim, I’d found some really cool decorations for home. For me however, it’s not the decoration itself. It’s the story that goes with it. When I see those little glass decorations, they not only look cool, but more importantly they remind me of my first adventure to Japan, which was planned and booked in about ten minutes whilst sitting on the front deck of a boat at work as we were in the process of reconnoitering a new outdoor trip. Another one I have is a wooden Santa from Breckenridge in Colorado. This was my first trip to the USA, when I was cooking for a snowboarding training school. One of the best days I had there was when Peak 10 opened and I was able to ski down chest-deep double black runs all day... it was awesome!
 
However, back to the decorations. The more I travel or the more experiences I have, the more I collect and when they’re all out each Christmas, they bring back wonderful memories which brings so much more meaning to this time of the year so. Next time you’re travelling or on an adventure, instead of buying a crappy souvenir pen or snow globe that will disappear into the abyss of your garage five minutes after you arrive home, buy a Christmas decoration, which you can put out every year that will bring back all the cool memories of the experiences you had when you first received it.

Have a Merry Christmas and a Wonderful New Year!