It might LOOK like a cheap plastic ornament...

...but it's actually one of the very few surviving ornaments from my childhood. Growing up in the late 70's, early 80's there was no shortage of cheap plastic ornaments on our artificial Christmas tree. See my post from a few days ago if you want to relive some of my childhood tree memories with me. The box of crappy ornaments are not so special until your parents decide to sell their house, and your father throws out the box with most of your childhood ornaments in them. My mother was heartbroken and yelled at him for days. Actually, she still yells at him every year around this time. I did not know what I really missed until I saw this most precious plastic candy cane and instantly gripped it to my heart. Since then, it has been packed in tissue every year and put away with the expensive ornaments...

...expensive, like the one below. This is a large, heavy, glass ornament that my older daughter bought a few years ago. Every year, we each get to choose a new special ornament to put on the tree. This makes putting up ornaments fun since the unpacking of each ornament brings back tons of memories...

...memories, such as those this jolly little Santa is keeping. What looks like a silly little candy tube topper, is actually...just that. However,

Underneath, there are about 1-5 needles from every single tree we've had in the past probably...10 years or so. A little piece of scotch tape is all that is required for Santa to hold the evidence of these fun memories.

...fun memories that can actually be bittersweet. My mother-in-law Deana made this cross-stitched Little Drummer Boy for my husband close to 20 years ago. She knew that The Little Drummer Boy was my husband's favorite story. When we unwrap the ornaments each year, my husband tells the kids about Nana (whom my little one did not get to know) who is now an angel...

...much like the pretty angel Nana made that sits in its special place at the top of the tree every year.

...speaking of sitting, here sits Captain Kirk, who must have had his leg gnawed off by a tribble. My sister used to work at a Christmas ornament store when she was a teenager and would collect and bring home all the broken ornaments. She gave us bags of them. In the lean years just after college, all the ornaments on our tree were broken in some way. We had toy soldiers marching on one leg, reindeer missing antlers, Santa minus his bag of goodies, horses with three legs, sleighs without the bells.

So if you were to come and see my motley tree, what might look like a bunch of cheap, plastic, broken down ornaments, are actually cheap, plastic, broken down, extremely meaningful symbols in our family. :)