About CELIStial Art

How It Came To Be

y fascination for Christmas ornaments started at an early age. I was born and raised in Caracas, Venezuela, in a family of five children where art, literature, and music were our daily bread and butter. Being of German descent, the Advent season played a major role in our annual Christmas celebration. Making handmade ornaments with my mother and siblings marked the beginning of the holiday season for us, which was often long before the arrival of the first Advent Sunday.

Some of my parents’ closest friends were artists, writers, and poets. Mom would often invite them to our home to make Christmas ornaments. One of the first memories I recall is making a colorful paper-chain garland made from “papel lustrillo” (glossy paper). As we grew older, the ornaments became more elaborate. I remember making bright-colored tissue paper balls, very simple and beautiful. And after that, making ornaments from emptied eggshells and from balsa wood cutouts painted with leftover enamel from my brother’s model car kits.

Figuring out what materials to use for the ornaments was fascinating but coming up with the ideas was even more exciting. My siblings and I always had different ideas for our ornaments. Some ideas celebrated the wonderful book we had just read, or the ballet grandma had taken us to, or that special present we had received for our birthday. Each of us would make ornaments that commemorated the most important happening in our young lives of that year.

One of my children’s favorite Christmas traditions was to hear the story behind each ornament. They would point to one ornament asking for its tale. Usually, they knew it by heart, but listening to the story over and over again, Christmas after Christmas, was as much fun as Christmas morning. So, I would tell the story about the plastic canvas ornaments made by our neighbor Delores who stuffed them with brand new $2 bills. Or the ornaments made by their aunt Claudia for our daughter Laura’s baptism. Or the ornaments that grandma had made from mini antique bottles she had bought at a flea market with their Father. And so, Christmas season evenings were filled with ornament stories being told, sitting by the tree, listening to carols (and some of The Beatles songs snuck in), as we sipped on hot-milk-with-cold-milk-with-sugar with sleep-filled eyes.

A Christmas Tree is like a scrapbook: a celebration of one’s family. Each specially crafted ornament is like a page of that scrapbook, remembering the big milestones such as getting married, school graduations, or welcoming a baby. Celebrating the small milestones, the day the training wheels came off your bicycle, the day you lost your first tooth, or the day you had the greatest pillow fight with your cousins, is, perhaps, more important. I have given my children Christmas ornaments every year since they were born. As passionate as I am about Christmas ornaments, I kept a record of every single ornament my children have received, noting the year they received it, its meaning, who gave it to them, and any other notable details.

Thanksgiving Day of the year my daughter was married, I gave her a big crate with all the ornaments she had received throughout the years so she could decorate her first Christmas tree. That year, on Christmas, I gave her a very special present. It was a thumb drive and a manila folder with a printed inventory of every single ornament she had ever received, with a photograph of each ornament and a complete description. As she opened the present and realized what it was, tears ran down her cheeks like a river of emotions that couldn’t be stopped; she was speechless and grateful. This has been by far the most perfect gift I have ever given to anyone. It took about a week to photograph and document every ornament (the description and year of each ornament had come from the box in which each of them was stored, as I always document every new ornament before putting it away). It cost me about $12, which was the price of the thumb drive, but it took 25-years to put it together. I was the keeper of her infant, toddler, and young girl Christmas ornaments memories; and on that day, I was able to pass those memories to her. I know she will do the same when the time comes.

Some of the ornaments of my childhood hang on my Christmas tree, some of them on my daughter’s Christmas tree, and some continue to be hung on my nonagenarian parent’s Christmas Tree. Each of these ornaments still stands today for what they stood for when they were created long ago: the joy I felt when I received my first set of acrylic paints, or when the tooth fairy came to collect my first fallen baby tooth or the amazing craft sessions with mom and her artist friends.

With these unique, found-object ornaments I make today, I hope to spread the joy I experienced in my childhood, the magical moments we created with our children, the importance of cherishing family, and the significance of celebrating every magical moment of our lives.