I helped the kids put the ornaments on the tree yesterday. I pulled each one out of the box, inspecting to see if it broke over the summer and trying to remember the story, if there was any. Some were acquired because of a particular theme one year, others were gifts from people we didn’t know well and yet some were notable, intimate and sentimental.

Shortly after my wife and I got married, our parents gave us our own childhood ornaments. While I thought the sentiment macabre at the time, I see now that this was their own rite-of-passage, born from wisdom. Each was doing their part to help my wife and I ‘leave and cleave’ as we started our own traditions. Each took some moment to mourn the passing of that season for them, no doubt, yet handed them over gracefully.

As my kids grow up, they bring home the handmade treasures from school and adorn them proudly on the tree. Because of our parent’s gift, we’re able to place the kids’ school treasures next to our own.

One year, my daughter, who was five or six at the time, found a homemade ornament with my wife’s picture in it. My wife must have been three or four years old in the picture. “Mama, who took this picture of me? I look so peaceful." “That’s actually a picture of me,” my wife replied. “No uh. That’s me, silly” resounded from behind the tree. Realizing that arguing with her would be futile, my wife noted, “you have no idea how right you are.”

Yesterday, my son found the ornament he made in early elementary and put it next to one of mine from he same grade: his a die-cut, laminated ornament shape and mine a die-cut Christmas tree, both displaying the same face, thirty-years apart. “Dad, we look nothing alike. See, you have on a red shirt and I have on a blue one.” Yep. This is true.

The kids are realizing they are part of a history. They see the artifacts of Christmases past and begin to find their context. They question every ornament looking for a story whether it was handmade by previous generations or came in a box of cereal. “Daddy, this ornament says ‘McCoy family’ on it, but doesn’t have my name,” noted my youngest. “Did this one break? Why am I missing?” The reality that there was a McCoy family before kids, and a McCoy family with some kids and now a McCoy family with all the kids never occurred to her. In her mind, we all always had been and we all always will be.

They’re also beginning to understand their own history. They see the ornaments from preschool and remember when and how it was made. They remember some of the stories from the ornaments (and make up stories where they don’t).

This is why we decorate the Christmas tree together: because it happens every year, because it’s happened for years before them and will happen for years after. It’s these stories that they’ll share.