As one ages one's thoughts become increasing random. This is the only excuse I can proffer as to
why, at three o’clock this morning, I was thinking of Christmas
Tree Angels!
Not just any old Christmas Tree Angel, but the very first
Christmas Tree Angel I knew and loved.
She had been inherited from a distant relative, distant in
time that is, my Grandmother’s Grandmother I believe. Whether she had started life as a Christmas Tree
Angel I doubt, but she was most certainly not a child’s toy. She was made from porcelain and shaped what
we would readily recognise as a grown up Barbie Doll form, you know, slender
torso, long legs and a thrusting bosom. She was dressed in a gauzy long sleeved and
flowing dress that covered her from neck to ankle, there were remnants of lace
around the neck, sleeve, and dress hem, but like her dress it was nicotine
stained yellow. She would have originally been attached to the
tree by a ribbon from her back, through her clothes, around the top of the tree
and back to be bowed prettily at the front.
Angel had but the one wing, the other had fallen victim to a
long deceased family dog, as had her cape.
The cowled hood of which, according to Nan, had been ripped so violently
from her head that it was the reason she had been left with an entirely bald pate,
except for a bedraggled fringe of blonde wispy hair. Her missing eye was not down to the savage
attentions of the family dog, but a clumsy child dropping her on her head. Her remaining glass eye was still the
brightest of bright blue, piercingly so.
Amazingly, in the mind of the small child I was then, she
was articulated. Her head was often
tilted upward, as though gazing to the heavens, or in her case the central
ceiling light. Her arms had once been
placed in a position of welcome, outstretched and beseeching the world to
honour the baby Jesus, (he was at the bottom of the tree along with his family
and an elephant, the donkey having suffered an even worse fate at the jaws of
the family dog.) Her head, arms and legs
were connected internally by a couple of thick rubber bands, which over time
would perish and need replacing, and here the explanation of “her arms had once
been placed…” becomes apparent. Whoever
had replaced the rubber bands had done so in such a way that lifting her arms
would also cause her legs to fly upwards and spread in what, as an adult I can
now perceive to be, a totally un-Angelic way.
Sadly for Angel her legs became semi fixed in this position no matter
what one did to her arms. The solution
of removing the rubber bands was dismissed as even though no-one really wanted
to see a wanton, one eyed, bald Angel glaring down at them through her spread
legs, a paraplegic Angel would have lacked respect. So the problem was solved by binding her
firmly, torso and legs, to the tree, and although the prettiest of ribbons was
used for the binding, she still took on the appearance of a tortured and about
to be a burnt at the stake martyred saint!
As much ceremony was given to the packing away of Angel as
had been to the getting her out.
Although it must have been a fiddly job disengaging the rubber band so
the lid of the box could be closed, until Christmas came around again.
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