Reader’s favorite holiday decorations trigger memories, engender traditions
MARLENE HAAS | COURTESY PHOTO ORLANDO | While going through the boxes of potential keepsakes her sister had retrieved from their father’s home in Pennsylvania after his death last January, Marlene Haas saw something she had to have. “I had an opportunity to go through the items and quickly chose an old 16-piece Nativity set that I remembered my father’s parents displaying every Christmas,” said Haas, who lives in Chuluota and belongs to Most Precious Blood Parish in Oviedo. The palely painted china figurines – Baby Jesus, Mary, Joseph, three Wise Men, a donkey, a cow, a shepherd and shepherd boy, three sheep, a herding dog, an angel and another bowing man who isn’t mentioned in the traditional telling of the Christmas story – carried Haas back to her childhood. “It is never easy to lose your grandparents and parents, but it is comforting to have items that that are a constant reminder of them,” Haas said. “This Nativity set has always had a place of honor during all the holidays when I was growing up. Now it is proudly displayed in my living room year-round.” For most readers who, like Haas, responded to the Florida Catholic’s request for stories about their favorite Christmas and Advent decorations, the trappings of the season hold value more for the memories they trigger and traditions they engender than for their monetary worth or outward beauty. In fact, some of the most-cherished items are downright tacky. “Three years ago at my daughter Amaryllis’ place of work, they had … (a white) elephant gift exchange, which is the exchange of the ugliest thing you can find in your home to wrap and swap with a co-worker. Someone brought in the largest kneeling Santa I have ever seen,” wrote Orlando resident Juana Salgado of Holy Cross Parish, who enclosed a snapshot of the gift her daughter brought home that day – a bright, hollow plastic Santa with hat removed and hands folded praying over the Baby Jesus in a manger. Salgado was delighted her daughter chose to lug home the big Santa (in kneeling position with head bowed he’s nearly as tall as the kitchen counter in the background of the photo) because it meant the young woman appreciated something the mother had been doing for years. As a way of spreading the message that Christmas celebrations should be centered on Jesus, not Santa, Salgado began buying kneeling Santa figurines and ornaments for herself, her family and her friends. The kneeling Santa figures and the children’s book from the 1980s that inspired them – “Santa and the Christ Child,” written by Nicholas Bakewell and illustrated by Herbert Rayburn – were on a number of readers’ lists of holiday favorite things. “I wanted my children to never lose sight of the reason for Christmas – it is not about toys, food, days off from school, etc.,” said Diana Quicker, a resident of Sarasota and parishioner at St. Thomas More, who bought her first kneeling Santa after her first child was born. “It is about the birth of Christ and I believe children can truly learn the meaning of this holiday when you combine the commercialism with the religious.” Conveying the true meaning of Christmas leads many Catholics of Cuban heritage to acquire lots of figurines of a different kind – enough to re-create not the just the stable, but the whole village of Bethlehem. The displays are called Nacimientos. “In my homeland of Cuba, people used to display huge Nacimientos, some as big as the whole living room. I remember my mother making it every year, although ours was not as big,” recalled Miami Beach resident and St. Patrick parishioner Sonia Lantigua. Lantigua strived to keep up the tradition when she and her husband fled Cuba for Maryland with their four small children in 1967. The family moved in 1978 to Miami, where their fifth child was born. When her children grew up, married and started families, Lantigua put a new twist on the tradition, a “living Nativity” performance starring the grandchildren. Lantigua made the costumes; her husband built the scenery. “Most of them are teenagers now and they are not very interested in wearing costumes made by Abuela (grandmother), so last year was our last presentation. … As they get older and their families grow, maybe they will recreate the living Nacimiento with their own children,” Lantigua said. “I’ll be watching from above.” Haas, who rediscovered her grandparents’ Nativity set and has made it her own, also hopes her grandchildren will stay emotionally connected with the family’s traditions. When her 17-year-old granddaughter and 19-year-old grandson visit for Christmas this year, they’ll see for the first time the decoration that’s been in the family for three generations. And they’ll have a reason to talk with their grandmother about her grandmother. “I give them the grand tour of the things that have been in the family for a long time,” Haas said. “These are things that have been special to me and I hope they’ll be special to them, too.”
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