Christmas Tree Ornaments

My mother collects Christmas tree ornaments. She puts about five ornaments on each single twig of the tree (I kid you not), and the overall effect is slightly overwhelming but very beautiful and festive. Over the years, I have been given a few ornaments for Christmas, so that my own tree looks quite nice, too. I don’t receive the very best ornaments, but sometimes she finds more than one of a sort at some flea market or Christmas fair, and then she passes it to me. Or I have liked one so very much that she found it in her heart to part with it. (She is a true collector, and doesn’t part with her treasures easily.) Here are some of my ornaments that I really like:

This one is from Gablonz in Czechia. It’s almost a hundred years old and made of glass and plastic pearls.

Equally old, this one was manufactured for poorer people: It’s just a picture printed on paper and then stuck on some silver-colored filament.

This is new, but created after old patterns typical of the Ore Mountains on the German-Czech border.

This one is entirely new, and you can see it’s much clunkier than the others. I like it nevertheless!

A Happy Boxing Day to all of you!

– Rike Horstmann