You could be mistaken for thinking that I spend all my waking moments doing nothing but buying Christmas ornaments such is the volume of these gorgeously festive bits of plastic that are delivered to my apartment with such frequency that we are now on first name terms with the delivery driver.
The truth is that I do buy a LOT of ornaments, the result of being in love with Christmas to an almost unhealthy degree – I don’t think there is such a thing but a little bit of self-deprecatory self-awareness never hurt anyone – and also their purchase being one of the things that can make a bad day somewhat better, even though the ornaments won’t be with me for a few weeks.
I am a creature of the sentimental and the brightly entertaining, and these ornaments, drawn from TV shows, movies and books that I love, allow me to bring these characters, who have brought me so much joy, onto my tree for a couple of months and lose myself once again in the happiness they bring me.
It’s festive happiness that has finally returned in full after seven year wholly or partly lost in the fog of grief surrounding the loss of my two beloved parents, and these ornaments are very much part of that renaissance of Christmas spirit, giving it concrete form and reminding how gloriously colourful, funny and exuberant life can be …
Buzz Lightyear and his archenemy Zurg have, of course, been around for quite some time, ever since the Toy Story franchise kicked off its emotionally resonant fun of four films, and sundry shorts and specials way back in 1995. But it was only this year, when Pixar, the animation studio owned by Disney that is responsible for their existence, decided to tell Buzz’s origin story as a real space ranger (well, real as in not a toy, anyway; he’s still fictional in every way) in Lightyear, a film that is “a superbly good origin tale [that beautifully embodies a] swashbuckling, ’50s movie serial sense of fun and high stakes [while] beautifully capturing what it means to belong and to regain a powerful sense of connection to others.” It was a lot of fun to watch, as heartfelt as they get and a perfect addition to Toy Story canon that brought Buzz even more alive, if that’s even possible. So, grabbing these ornaments from Disney and Hallmark was a no-brainer in a year that very much belonged to one Buzz Lightyear of Star Command!
Oh my heart! Baymax is an out and out joy. First capturing all our feelings in 2014’s Big Hero 6, he has lately been appearing 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.
It was only released 23 years in 1999, but The Matrix honestly feels like it was released a lifetime ago. It’s had such an effect on sci-fi storytelling and the cinematic visuals that accompany it that it feels older than it is, but Neo is but 23 years old, the protagonist of four films now with the release of 2021’s lacklustre instalment, The Matrix Resurrections, and now embodied in one of this year’s Hallmark ornaments which managed to fittingly find a light-filled space on my tree.
The Wizard of Oz is a classic for a reason. A perfect blend of whimsical fantasy and grounded humanity, the 1939 film, based on L. Frank Baum’s 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, gives us a little girl lost, both geographically and emotionally, scarecrows and lions and a tin man and all kinds of witches and wizards, and I love the fact that this ornament captures the jaw-dropping sense of Dorothy metaphorically opening the door to a whole new world and staggeringly different part of her life. Granted, she tumbles into Oz but I love how the ornament evokes how weirdly strange and yet exciting her adventure was.
I have never been a game player of any kind – I came of age just as they were getting a foothold and they have never really been my thing – but I did know of some of the characters that were iconic in the genre such as Sega’s Sonic the Hedgehog, and so, it was suggested we take my nieces and nephews to see Sonic the Hedgehog 2 this year, I thought it would be light, diverting fun and nothing else. That’s fine – light and diverting is often just what the escapist doctor ordered! But the film turned out to be fun and meaningful, and quite apart from some lovely bonding time with my nieces and nephews, it actually had an wholly unexpected emotional impact which I am honouring with this ornament.
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 2015, 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.
Among the many things I inherited from my mum are a series of blue Winnie the Pooh paperbacks, published decades ago, which tell the story of the honey-loving denizen of the Hundred Acre Wood and his friends including Eeyore and Piglet who are captured in this new ornament – well, new for me; it was originally a 2014 release as you can see – which joins the huge number of Winnie the Pooh ornaments I have in my collection. I will no doubt keep adding to that collection because my favourite yellow teddy bear has a huge hold on my heart and reminds of the very best parts of my choldhood.
UP is a beautiful film. One of Pixar’s finest efforts, the animated feature masterpiece begins with a rip-your-heart-out sequence that exquisitely and painfully sweetly captures the intense beauty and specialness of real unconditional love, and which sets the scene for the film to come in which now grumpy old pensioner Carl (Ed Asner) finds life again in the form of an initially unwanted relationship with a young boy named Russell (Jordan Nagai) on a gloriously meaningful adventure to South America. But the focus of this ornament is that initial heart-swelling, heart-rending in equal measures sequence where Carl and his wife Ellie show how wonderful real love can be and how it transforms life so much that it’s loss can come close to destroying it … until something else comes along to heal it. But that is a later story …
I used to love coming down to Sydney from the Far North Coast of NSW in Australia to see my grandparents during school holidays. Not only because I adored them and the beach visits, fish-and-chips dinners and Sara Lee desserts, but because they had four TV stations (we had two) and so, access to all kinds of shows we couldn’t see such as I Dream of Jeannie, which in the early-to-mid-70s (yes, I am that old) was still a relatively new TV show in reruns. Like Bewitched and Here’s Lucy, I Dream of Jeannie was perfect holiday fare, a warm hug of a sitcom that was effervescently silly but which I loved because it meant my grandparents were close by and we were snug and safe in their cost world for a week. This ornament was a must-purchase because so many memories are wrapped up in its pink plastic form.
Like everyone else with a pulse in the ’80s, I loved the wild adventurism of the Indiana Jones films. Throwing in some archaeological thrills and spills, a great love of mine, and a character who got away with so much of the bravado-laden I wish was mine to live out, Indy, as he was known, is most memorable to me from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom because I saw it in Sydney in 1984 with my then 76-year-old great aunt Elizabeth who was a proper lady from Sydney’s tony eastern suburbs and who didn’t know what to make of a film that features a lot of loudness, pagan rituals and beating of baddies. Getting this ornament brought back all those memories and it’s worth it for that alone, let alone the sheer enjoyment this character has brought me over the years.