The Age of Christmas Angels

According to her box, home for 11 months of the year, her full name is Holi Brite. Holi is an unpretentious Christmas angel. She wears a simple satin gown and gold mesh smock. Her delicate porcelain features are serene and unchanging, and her gilded wings are forever outstretched. Each porcelain hand wields a lighted-candle to pierce the winter darkness. The hem of her gown hides a half dozen or more miniature lights that bathe the air around her in a peaceful white glow.

I can’t say for certain how many Christmas gatherings she’s witnessed with those unblinking eyes. I’ve searched my memory for some clue, but I just can’t pin down her age. She must be close to twenty, or at the very least not far from it. I know little of the age of Christmas angels, but I suspect that twenty years (or close to it) is very old. Some people, concerned with trends and fashion, retire or discard their angels after just a few seasons, but not Grandma. Holi set atop Grandma’s tree every year since the year I first bought her the angel, paid for with grandma’s money, because I was young and broke most of the time.

But all of that was a life time ago, and to buy a Christmas angel for Grandma seemed like such an insignificant event at the time that I hardly remember it. And yet, these many years later, I see it wasn’t so very insignificant after all, because every year grandma topped her tree with Holi and told the story of how I brought Holi home. Grandma never retired or discarded Holi the Christmas Angel. But as is the nature of heirlooms and memories, they pass from one generation to the next. And so with Grandma’s passing, Holi passes to me. She rests in a place of honor on my tree this year, and her porcelain gaze will witness a new generation of Christmases. She will have a home on my tree until she and her story pass to another.

Merry Christmas.

David