Telling Our Family’s Expat Stories Through Our Trees

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In our first few years as a married couple, we had very little money for presents and no space in our studio apartment for a tree. Never mind that, because we didn’t have any ornaments to speak of, either. We didn’t feel like we lacked anything in these times. Just like with Valentine’s Day, one particular day didn’t mean any more than another (birthdays being an exception), and we tried to express our appreciation for one another all year round as opposed to putting our sentiments into an object or a gift. We took the holidays as time to be with one another, and appreciate the gift of time together. We never even thought of getting a Christmas tree.

Having kids didn’t change this much at first, as they were too young to connect their grandparents’ packages in the mail with a specific day. The further we moved away from our grandparents, the more they wanted to send presents. Once we started watching more movies and they were inducted into the Christmas traditions, we as parents got more excited about them as well, including a Christmas tree.

We didn’t have many meaningful ornaments those first couple of years, since we’d never had a tree of our own. But preschool and library events and crafty friends soon changed that. I sometimes marvel at our friends with their perfectly decorated trees, so gorgeous and balanced they could be featured in magazines. With the right items, my husband could make our tree look that good. But this year, as we unpacked the modest amount of ornaments from our last four years, they all tell their own stories. In fact, our kids delighted in telling the stories they remember from each small, sometimes delicate piece as they hang them on the tree. Turns out we created our own holiday traditions throughout our moves, first across our home country, and now in our host country of China. We can see these in our ornaments.

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There are the traditional crafts from their first school: a construction paper Christmas tree, a snowman made of styrofoam. There is the mold of their feet, taken and painted by their favorite babysitter in the first city where we relocated. There’s the clay imprint of our family dog’s paw, who made that first move under duress and stayed with us as long as she could. There are the ornaments we made with our best friends the winter before we moved to China; every piece is handpainted with care, and all the love of our weekly playdates which we promised would turn into weekly video chats but did not. We unpack the special ornaments from our visit to Tokyo Disneyland last year, right before the whole world changed. Those get a special place on our tree. Our oldest bursts with pride as he unpacks the silver star, carefully cut by his Dad last year and glued onto a toilet paper roll, which takes that most important spot on top of the tree.

As we finish with the decorations we have, I notice more appearing. The kids take out their art supplies and create an ornament out of just about anything: a circle and some string, pompoms and glue, colorful sticks and star stickers. Soon they’ll be infused with even more memories, and it seems right that what is typically a symbol of stable family life, a Christmas tree, turns into an ever-morphing, storytelling, transformative stage for our friendships and continued adventures abroad.

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Photos: Cindy Marie Jenkins

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