Ornaments

When I was around 11 or 12, my mother started a new Christmas tradition in our house: a Christmas tree trimming party. Instead of a normal dinner, she’d make a host of little hors d’oeuvres and put on Christmas music while we decorated the fresh fir standing in the window of our living room. As part of the festivities, my mom required each of us kids to buy a new ornament to place on the tree. One by one, we had to show the others our selection and explain why we’d chosen it. For instance, my sister found a miniature car to symbolize the new car she’d bought that year. I didn’t usually have a good story, but my mom remembers that one year I brought a tiny broom, quipping that I was the one who did all the housework.

My memories of those tree-trimming parties were so fond that I hosted one of my own years later in my first apartment. I had virtually no furniture, but I put up a large tree in my living room, festooned it with white lights, and invited my friends over to eat and drink and decorate with me. I remember finding an ornament depicting Santa talking to a bird with the line, “Have you been a good little gull?” printed on it. It satisfied my love of puns. I still have that ornament some 40 years later!

When we were first married, my husband established that he favored simple, shiny ball ornaments in various colors as decoration for our tree. I found this hopelessly boring but more or less went along with his tastes for the first couple of years. But I’d already gleaned my motley collection of ornaments over the years, and I started insisting they be interspersed among the simpler baubles. Over time, since my hubby lost interest in actually decorating the tree, I gradually did away with those ordinary (and perilously breakable) round balls and substituted them with the treasures I’d been collecting. My sister was fond of gifting me special ornaments. I have a set of Christmas Mickey and Minnie Mouse she’d brought back from a trip to Disney World. She also gave me one with a special message about sisters. Each time I decorate my tree, I think of her when I put up those ornaments.

I guess that’s why I love the individual and unique ornaments that populate my tree each year. Unwrapping each one and hanging it on the tree brings back a memory. There are all the ones from trips we’ve taken over the years: Washington, D.C., Wyoming, San Francisco, and St. Louis, to name a few. We have several ornaments from Hawaii, some with sand from the beach in them. One says, “Mele Kalikimaka,” which means “Merry Christmas” in Hawaiian. We even have some from overseas trips, including a Murano glass globe from Venice and a bauble from the Guinness factory in Ireland.

Each of my children also has a unique collection of ornaments given to them over the years. In addition to ornaments I’ve given each child every year, they have souvenirs from their first Christmases and babyhoods gifted by relatives and friends. Although my own kids don’t relish the activity of decorating the tree the way that I do, I insist that they at least hang their own set of ornaments up each Christmas. Despite their complaints, they always seem to enjoy unwrapping their ornaments and laughing and teasing each other about various childhood memories that the ornaments evoke. To me, this is the secret to having a meaningful time at Christmas.

I admire elaborately decorated Christmas trees with color coordination and themes. The shopping malls always feature such trees in their Christmas departments, and many of my friends and family members do a masterful job with their tree-trimming artistry. But I will always favor my more homespun, disorganized, and individualistic Christmas tree. It links me with all the Christmases of my past and holds promise for future ones.

Time for a Change

As we close the books on another season of Daylight Saving Time, I have just one question: Is it time for bed yet?

In recent years, there has been a growing consensus that switching our clocks back and forth in the fall and the spring is at best an unpleasant and at worst a dangerous disruption to our daily lives. Here in the U.S., polls show a clear majority of Americans wanting to get rid of the annual ritual of “falling back” and “springing forward” with our clocks. The problem is, there is no consensus on whether to keep to standard time year round or to switch permanently to daylight saving time.

The U.S. Senate recently voted to make DST year-round in all but Arizona and Hawaii, the two states that have stubbornly clung to standard time over the years. The House, however, has not been ready to codify that commitment, citing evidence that permanent standard time may be the better option.

Most of us are inclined to think that an extra hour of daylight at the end of the day is a desirable goal. As the days get shorter toward the winter solstice, many people people are saddened by the shrinking hours of daylight and long for more time with the dwindling sunlight. Some studies have also shown that crime rates are lower during the months of Daylight Saving Time, ostensibly because criminals have one less hour of darkness in the evening in which to commit their crimes.

Yet the evidence for keeping to standard time is much more compelling. Scientists and health experts agree that the structure of standard time is better for health and safety. This is because holding to standard time more closely mimics our 24-hour circadian rhythms. Because our body clocks have an imperfect circadian rhythm that is slightly longer than 24 hours, we need the morning sunlight to help us “reset” ourselves each day. When we switch to Daylight Saving Time, we throw that resetting capability off. Permanently changing to DST would further divorce our bodies’ circadian rhythms from the waking and sleeping hours in our day. It would also mean that in the winter months, people would be leaving for work and school in darkness, especially in some of our northern states.

One thing is for certain. All the jokes and memes I see twice a year when we reset our clocks are well-founded. When I was a mother of young children, I bemoaned the disruption to my children’s sleep patterns that would inevitably occur for at least a week after each time change. In the fall, it was easy to get the kids to bed early. On the other hand, I would sometimes find my toddler falling asleep in his or her dinner at 5 pm. DST was worse. How could I expect my rambunctious kids to go to sleep when it was still light outside?

Daylight Saving Time is a concept whose time has come and gone. It was initially instituted to save energy during the summer when there was the greatest access to daylight. Not coincidentally, the first DST laws were passed during the world wars in order to save energy for the war effort. It became a cherished part of summer for many people, and it has been suggested that the fondness for DST is really indicative of a fondness for summer itself.

I think we should follow the needs of our bodies and restore permanent standard time. It would help our health and cut down on heart attacks and accidents, which have historically increased in the spring when the clocks are set ahead by an hour. And we would still get to enjoy the increasing daylight that occurs naturally during the summer months.

As I write this post, I realize that it’s still fairly early in the morning. Yet I feel as if I’ve put in a long day already. As I said before, is it bedtime yet?