(via Shutterstock)
More ornaments?! Did you really buy more than 15 ornaments in one year?
Readers, I bought close to 60 and while that likely suggests a tad too much compulsive purchasing by someone who’s reached an age when they should be making more sensible buys, I love how happy it makes to have my pop cultures loves and lived experience up on my tree.
This year’s purchases surprised me because I didn’t think there was much left to truly surprise me, but an impulsive search on eBay, for instance, one day netted me all kinds of TV show ornaments including some featured here and others than didn’t make the cut.
Suffice to say, the ornaments don’t just make the tree look fun and colourful, they remind me of a life full of fun entertainment and characters who feel like family, and that is a joy in and of itself.
It disturbs me greatly to say this but The Sound of Music and I are exactly the same age. So, yes, if you know that the film was released in 1965, a film adaptation of the stage musical written by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, then you know that the movie and I are both turning 60 next year. Quite apart from how lovely the story and music is, my main sentimental attachment to the film is that it was showed without fail once a year on the lone commercial TV station we had access to way back when, and in the days before VHS tapes, Blu-Rays etc, the only way to see old films was to sit through its entire ad-punctuated run on TV. We’d gather as a family, snuggled with snacks to eat, and enjoy the von Trapps escape from Nazi-occupied Austria in 1938 with not much more than their love and the songs in their hearts.
A. A. Milne’s beloved creation, Winnie the Pooh, is another character who has well and truly blown the one-character only prohibition right off the Christmas tree. Making his first published appearance in 1924 in When We Were Very Young – actually first made an appearance in a commissioned story in the Evening News in 1925 and had his own book in 1926 – Winnie the Pooh, and the rest of the Hundred Acre Woods gang, have been making our hearts swell with love for decades now. He has lots of friends including Rabbit who is a little cranky and pompous at times but who is also full of ideas, not all of which work out, and which often involve Winnie-the-Pooh and Piglet. He lives in the Hundred Acre wood, so says Wikipedia, “between the sandy pit where Roo plays and the area where the animals he calls his “Friends-and-Relations” live.” He is at the end of the day a bit of softie, despite his sometimes gruff words, and this Grolier ornament captures him beautifully, pushing a Christmas tree through the woods in a wooden wheelbarrow.
Linus Van Pelt + Snoopy (Peanuts)
I have talked long and with much passion and love on this blog about how much Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz means to me. I collected the collected comic strips as a kid in paperbacks I got at the local secondhand store for 10 and 20 cents each, laughed at Snoopy, adored the forthrightness of Lucy and found a lot to identify with in Charlie Brown who was me in so many ways it hurt (I was bullied and friendless in lots of ways growing up and he felt like a kindred spirit with whom I could well and truly identify). I have never lost my love of the comic strip or the characters and so there are LOTS of Peanuts ornaments on my tree and I’m thrilled to add quite a few more this year. Among them is this one featuring Linus and Snoopy who often engage in battles of will over Linus’s beloved blanket, and while Linus isn’t happy to be parted with it while it washes, I suspect he also worried about how intently Snoopy is waiting for the cycle to finish and if he will snatch the blanket before Linus can get to it.
Nemo (Finding Nemo)
Seriously it’s just over 20 years since Nemo and Dory and the whole gang from Pixar’s wondrously funny and enormously heartfelt film, Finding Nemo, hit cinemas and made their ways instantly into our hearts? It appears so. In this lovely new ornament from Hallmark, Nemo (Alexander Gould) and Dory (Ellen DeGeneres) are shown in their reef side home, their sanctuary before both went on big adventures into the very dry and scary world of people. Through all of these by-the-skin-of-their-teeth adventures, they always had each other, even if they were often separated and I love how this ornament speaks to the lovely friendship between them.
Writer and illustrator Dorothy Wall first slid anthropomorphic koala Blinky Bill into the public consciousness in a 1933 book by Brooke Nicholls, Jacko – the Broadcasting Kookaburra, for which Wall did the artwork. It didn’t take long for Blinky Bill to get his own solo outing in Blinky Bill: The Quaint Little Australian in the same year, which led to a slew of successive titles like Blinky Bill Grows Up (1934) and Blinky Bill and Nutsy: Two Little Australians (1937). These were eventually collected into The Complete Adventures of Blinky Bill in 1939, a collection which was reprinted 26 times between 1940 and 1965 and which became one of the foundational books of my reading-rich childhood. I still have the collection today and while it’s a little bruised and battered after much loving use, it’s a treasures possession because it reminds me of how lucky I was to have parents who loved books and reading and who bought me books when I was quite young and which began a lifelong love of literature which, this blog attests, endures to the present.
Olaf you are the best! While I ostensibly only went to see the 2013 film Frozen to keep my niece and nephew amused on long Christmas holiday, the truth is I fell in love with Olaf and the rest of the film’s animated cast harder than any of the kids. A key part of the appeal for me is Josh Gad as Olaf, who gave voice and exuberant life to a character whose well-meaning and sweet, and wildly inquisitive thanks to effectively being a young kid, newly born thanks to the ice and snow-shaping magical powers of Princess Elsa of Arendelle (Idina Menzel), and who steals every scene he is in. Since that fateful meeting at a cinema in Ballina, New South Wales (Australia), Olaf and I have become great friends as he’s appeared in Frozen 2, Once Upon a Snowman, Olaf’s Frozen Adventure and Olaf Presents, and while, yes, I do have a number of Olaf ornaments already, I love this one of him with Sven the reindeer which shows Olaf in fine form atop his steed.
There seemed to be a lot of programs around when I was a kid in the 1970s where animals were the hero of the day. Think Flipper, Skippy, Gentle Ben, and of course, Lassie, a female Rough Collie dog who first made an appearnace in a 1938 short story by Eric Knight which was later spun into a 1940 novel, Lassie Come Home. Three years later, the book was a movie and then six more movies, and finally a TV series, which debuted in 1954 and ran for 19 years, featuring a dog called Pal and its descendants. While people may make fun of Lassie’s capacity to convey complex situations of dire peril and trouble with no language ability, I loved the coziness and warmth of a series where everything ended happily and Lassie was very much revered and treasured. This ornament is clearly a homage to the long-running TV show and was a wonderful find on eBay this year.
Oh my heart! Baymax is an out and out joy. First capturing all our feelings in 2014’s Big Hero 6, he has since appeared in a series of shorts on Disney+ in Baymax!, which features a series of amusing and affecting vignettes of people, all of whom come to know each other and have their lives changed because Baymax comes into their lives. He doesn’t mean to have the effect he does but affect them he does anyway and the result is heartwarming reminder of the power of connection and community, which find sweet distillation in their Santa-esque ornament of our hero trying to get down a chimney. Of course, Baymax is best buds with Hiro Hamada (Ryan Potter) the younger brother of Baymax’s creator Tadashi, their bond the result of the intense events of Big Hero 6 which brought them together forever.
Spider-Man: Holidays in Full Swing
Oddly enough for a kid who devoured all kinds of comics, I wasn’t massively into the superhero ones growing up. I read them sure, but I was more apt to read a Hanna-Barbera or quirky English comic like Cheeky Weekly or Krazy, and so while I watched the cartoon shows about the Justice League etc, it really wasn’t until the modern tsunami of movies released as part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe that I fully appreciated many of the superheroes including good old Spider-Man, who first appeard, according to Wikipedia, “anthology comic book Amazing Fantasy #15 (August 1962) in the Silver Age of Comic Books”. He’s now everywhere, of course, and I love that this ornament shows him getting all festive with his strong gossamer threads suitably and brightly lit up for the season.
How I adore this show. Gilmore Girls, created by Amy Sherman-Palladino, ran for seven seasons between 2000 and 2007, with a brief four-episode revival called Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life in 2016, feels like a great warm hug of love and belonging. At its emotional and narrative centre are mother and daughter, Lorelai and Rory (Lauren Graham and Alexis Bledel respectively) who are more like friends than family, though they are very much that, and whose lives intersect with all kinds of people including Luke Danes (Scott Patterson) who runs the local dinner in Stars Hollow, the town they call home. Luke has a heart of gold but a gruff manner, and is famed for his hatred of mobile aka cell phones, which Lorelai tolerates because it gets her what she needs most – coffee.
It’s not generally regarded as one of Pixar’s masterpieces, but I have a real soft sport for The Good Dinosaur. Released in 2015, the film marked Peter Sohn’s directorial debut and took us into an alternate history of the world where the dino-killing asteroid of 65 million years never struck and humanity and the so-called “terrible lizards” coexisted. The interesting angle here is that it’s the dinosaurs who are civilised and farming the land etc while humans are still pretty feral and it’s up to young Apatosaurus Arlo (Raymond Ochoa) to guide a young caveboy Spot (Jack Bright) to safety and a whole new life. The Good Dinosaur is all about the bond that can form between complete opposites when circumstances force them to understand each other and how transformative this journey can be. It’s inspirationally lovely and this ornament captures that feeling perfectly.
“What’s All the Yelling About?” (National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation)
I know it’s light and very silly but good lord does National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (NLCV) mean the absolute world to me. My dad’s hands-down favourite festive film, and an annual viewing must at our family home, the movie came to mean even more to me after dad died in 2016, six months before his favourite time of the year. I now keep up the annual viewing tradition as well surrounding myself with all kinds of NLCV merch including these and a number of other ornaments which bring the film alive in such precious ways. This ornament represents one key scene in particular when all of Clark Griswold’s decorating efforts have gone wrong and he’s, ahem, more than a little frustrated to say the least.
In the sage postmodern world of 2024, The Brady Bunch, created by Sherwood Schwartz and which ran from 1969 to 1974 for five seasons, often looks ridiculously twee and dorky. And, while yes, it is a bit earnest, to the point where The Brady Bunch movies had a great deal of fun affectionately satirising the show, it is also has a great deal of heart and a cosy lovely world where troubles arise but are easily and neatly solved. The story of a blended family way before that was on society’s radar in any sort of big way, The Brady Bunch was fun, cute and the kind of easy viewing that made hard days feel a little lighter. Did I sometimes want to be a part of this family? Yes, but then who didn’t? This ornament captures the chequerboard look of the show’s opening theme and also I think a lot of the joy that made it such a pleasure to watch.
Cheshire Cat (Alice in Wonderland)
Published in 1865, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll took readers on a wild and darkly ludicrous journey into a world where white rabbits run late, where drinking potions makes you big and small and all kinds of things in-between, and where Mad Hatters and March hares have nonsensical but perfectly fun afternoon teas. It’s also a place where Duchesses own perpetually grinning Cheshire cats who disappear leave their slightly unsettling grin behind. The Cheshire Cat is likely best known for his Disneyfied incarnation, which this ornament captures so brilliantly well.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight
Schlemiel! Schlimazel! Hasenpfeffer Incorporated
We’re gonna do it!
The opening three lines of the iconic theme song, “Making Our Dreams Comes true”, of Laverne and Shirley always heralded a show that, for me at least, was a lot more fun than the show from which it was spun, Happy Days. Yes, yes, I know, treasonous words, but the two titular acquaintances of Fonzie (Henry Winkler), Laverne DeFazio and Shirley Feeney (Penny Marshall and Cindy Williams respectively), were all giddy enthusiasm and happiness adventuring, and while their dreams kept butting heads against the reality of their lives as beer factory workers in late 1950s Milwaukee, they kept at it, determined to live the dreams they thought they could have. Laverne and Shirley is funny and sweet and a joy to watch, all of which finds distillation in this wonderfully exuberant Carlton Cards ornament.