Christmases Past

A small boy in Philadelphia watched eagerly as his mother placed the red metal kitchen stool carefully just inside the closet she shared with his father, pulled out the two steps folded beneath its plastic-upholstered seat, grasped its back and stepped up. Steadying herself, she reached for a box stored on the top shelf all year long. She lifted it carefully, and lowered herself to the floor, taking great care not to drop the cardboard box marked "Ornaments" which she placed on the nubby ivory bedspread covering their double bed. Lifting each flap of the box top, she motioned for him to scramble up onto the bed, to peer inside.

Each year ever since he could remember, on the first Saturday of December, he had 'helped' his mother decorate their home for Christmas. They'd set up the manger scene on the mantle over their fire place, amid pine boughs cut from the back yard. Several 3-candle electric light decorations would be placed on each window sill and plugged into the socket below. An artificial wreath, boasting a red velvet bow carefully straightened by his mother, would be hung on the front door. Various small character candles wrapped in foil would be opened and arranged on lamp tables, and shelves around their living room.

Once these items were set out just so, his mother would return the box to her bed and sitting down with her small son in her lap, she'd remove several ornaments, unwrap them from their tissue paper protection and tell him the story of how she'd acquired each one. A small metal bell had come from her grandparents' tree, a miniature wooden jack in the box had belonged to her younger brother, a small tin painted Christmas tree had been her mother's favorite childhood decoration. A cluster of tiny silver bells tied together with a red ribbon had adorned the jewelry box containing a ring with which his father had proposed before leaving for Viet Nam. These four small trinkets meant Christmas to Seeley Booth.

A few years later, somewhere in Ohio, a little girl experienced the same gleeful joy when her parents got out their decorations to adorn a spindly Christmas tree Max had bought at the corner grocery store. Her brother, older than she, pretended to disdain this tradition, declaring he had outgrown decorating their tree while gulping the hot cocoa Christine always made, adding miniature marshmallows as she stirred.

A miniature plastic teddy bear, a wooden carved pine tree, painted green with small red spots, a plastic race car with tiny rubber wheels, a small stuffed Santa Claus dressed in red felt and white fur, with miniscule black vinyl boots carrying a crimson cotton sack over his shoulder; these little trinkets were her favorites to hang on the tree each year. After the lights were draped around the tree just so, and multi-colored shiny glass balls were carefully hung with small wire hooks, her parents allowed her to choose just where to add the unique little ornaments. Then her father would lift her in his arms, up and up, until she was high enough to place a tinfoil star over the spindly topmost coniferous branch pointing skyward. This ritual was Temperance Brennan's favorite way to start the Christmas holidays.

No one could foresee the future of these two children, or that of their families. The joys, sorrows, worries, virtues, vices, courage, missteps, or decisions, both beneficial and harmful the parents would make in the face of serious problems which would affect their children's lives for many years to come.

The small collections of ornaments which enchanted each of these youngsters would grow ever more meaningful as time passed by, season after season. For one, their significance would increase gradually as holiday celebrations came, year upon year. For the other, they would only exist as treasured but rarely acknowledged memories during a painful lonely period, but reappear as delightful surprises to link their owner with the past in a most unexpected way.