Ronald William Cadmus - Fragile Ornaments, Melting Snowflakes and the Healing Light of Christmas

A popular Christmas song says the season of Christmas is the very best time of year. Why then are our emotions often fragile at Christmas, unlike any other time of the year? Though the holiday is occasion for joy and peace, it frequently is the saddest season of the heart. The holiday evokes diverse memories and feelings. Some pleasant. Many heartbreaking.

The lyrics of carols, hymns and Christmas songs tell us of family gatherings and happy children. It conveys homes filled with cheer, warm fireplaces, childlike dreams and visions of sugarplums, as icy windowpanes are etched with snowflakes and Jack Frost swirls around snowmen standing on front lawns in the reflection of warm glowing candles from windows casting halos on the snow.

Not all Christmas ornaments sparkle on tree branches. Some hold sad memories. Many lie fragile, broken in attic boxes stored away with feelings of loss over people weve loved who are no longer with us. We have heartache over terminated relationships and dwindling families. In divorced homes, children visit on alternating holidays, while our love for them never alters. Their absence on Christmas, a holiday meant to be shared with children, fills our lives with anguish. Melancholy makes it difficult to handle our fears, sorrows and separations.

Splintered, fragile ornaments often result from a lack of care and ritual in storing precious glass ornaments safely away, gently wrapped, protected, until a new season reveals their magic and promise of Christmas joy. At times we manage love, others and ourselves with similar disregard. We are like fragile ornaments and melting snowflakes. Our emotions are delicate. We treat ourselves with indifference. We desert those near and dear to us. We find ourselves abandoned. We feel the void of their absence. The depth of our aloneness. When we are on our own, the intensity that no one is near to us is magnified. Those that remain dear to us, remain dear only by holding on to memories. The most wonderful time of year, for many, turns into the loneliest time of the year.

As we remove ornaments from Christmas storage boxes, we hang them on the boughs remembering times, places and people. Each ornament holds a story. They are treasured keepsakes. Ornaments on a tree can narrate the whole story of ones life, reflected in their fragile glass and design. A memento from our grandparents tree. A decoration made for Mom and Dad when we were children. Gifts we made during family holiday craft making before we were divorced. We hold them in our hands recalling happy times, people and places. Just like shells collected on a beach during summer vacations reminding us of special days with family and friends. Or an assortment of stones and pebbles gathered from riverbeds or mountain streams can remind us of walks in the forest and meadows. Jars of colored sea glass store a lifetime of summer memories.

At this season of light and joy, we sometimes find that we come to the edge of all the light we know and find we are about to step off into the darkness of the unknown. That darkness for many brings an agonizing fear of loneliness. If we are alone at Christmas we find no comfort from songs of the season that refer to family gatherings, homes filled with laughter and cheer, or happy golden days of yore. They only remind us that happy golden days are past. Optimistic golden days of YORE. There is nothing golden in realizing YOURE alone.