My Favorite Part of the Christmas Season

Everybody has their favorites when it comes to the Christmas season. Some people like the food, the parties, the decorations, the TV specials, the get-togethers or just being with family. Me, I’m not much for playing favorites! I like them all! But there’s no question about my wife Jan. She’s into decorating! Everything in the house ends up getting decorated one way or another. Even me. But her specialty is trees. We’ll have 7 of them in the house this year. Each one fully decorated, each one perfect. It’s a sight to behold and I love it! It's part of our family tradition.

A Christmas project of that scale requires a lot of ornaments, and we’ve got boxes full. All of them special in their own way. But the best Christmas ornaments have a story. When they come out of the box someone says Aunt Judy gave us that, or we got that at Disneyworld, or that one used to belong to Grandma Pat. Often they remind us of a loved one, separated by time or space. There’s usually some sort of story told as they go on the tree. And that’s usually followed by someone saying I’ve always loved that Angel, or Santa, or Snowman or whatever. They become part of family folklore. That’s really what I’m going for in my ornament designs. Telling a story. Creating a connection with the people hanging them on the tree. It’s my greatest honor that somehow, in some small way, my art can become part of a family’s holiday traditions. That’s really my favorite part of the Christmas season.