Ornamental Amputees

In a moment of misplaced trust, my wife showed me her new Christmas tree ornaments that arrived in the mail today. I have it upon reliable authority that they are "cute," but when I peer at them closely, frankly, they befuddle me. The angels don't have noses, for one thing. Being spiritual beings, I suppose they have no need for noses, but all the same, it's just not natural. For another thing, they are holding objects that can only be described as "objects." One of them is holding a long cylindrical thing, appearing either to be a flute or a big stick, presumably for whacking the enemies of God. Another one has a big cone on his head (do halos come cone-shaped? I don't get it) and is holding something that looks like an accordion, or perhaps three doughnuts that have been glued together. Or perhaps the "accordion" is really an accordion-shaped bomb! After all, according to John Milton's Paradise Lost, angels were the ones first to invent missiles, and, by implication, the solarmanite, which we have never seen but probably looks like an accordion. Far from being cute, these ornaments are menacing: do these angels come with instruments of music ... or instruments of death?

I suppose what interested me most about the ornaments was that, along with the regular ornaments, she received a bag labelled "extra ornaments." Upon closer examination, it became clear that "extra" was the politically correct term for "broken" or "rejects." This motley assortment of amputees--a mouse with a clothing fetish, an ice skater, and a bearded elf (or is it Santa?) reminded me of what Christmas was really about. In the Christmas story, Jesus was born not to help the healthy but the sick, the lame (Isaiah 35:6), the footless iceskater, the legless mouse (see Jonah 3:8), the elf with his remaining arm outstretched for a hug. Besides, we have two cats, so all of the ornaments will eventually be maimed and deformed anyway. A recent reading from the church liturgical calendar includes Jesus' admonition that whatever is done for the "least of these" is done for Him (Matthew 25:40), and there is little that can be more bottom of the barrel than deformed Christmas tree ornaments. I would encourage you all to put deformed ornaments on your Christmas trees to help us remember what Christmas is really about. I have encouraged my wife to do this as well, but I have tried to do this when she is not in the same room.

I do feel that I need to make a comment about a striking double-standard here. What makes a noseless angel more acceptable than a footless skater? At least the skater presumably lost his foot in a bizarre, but wholly innocent, skating accident, perhaps while trying to rescue a friend who fell through the ice into the aqueous clutches of a maleficent pond. Noselessness, however ... I have read my eighteenth century medical documents, if not the twentieth century ones, and they seem to declare pretty indisputably that that sort of thing happens only as a result of syphilis. This ornament designer has clearly been doing too much midrashic reading on Genesis 6:2, and I fear that these supposedly friendly little angels carrying bombs are in fact fallen angels!

I have yet to see whether my wife will invite me to help decorate the tree this year. A couple years ago, before we were married, she did. Some people want their ornaments to be simply ornaments; I wanted mine to be rife with meaning. All she gave me to work with were satin threaded balls and long glass ornaments. Given these materials, I decided to combat gnosticism, reminding all that Jesus was fully human and was circumcised on the eighth day in fulfillment of the Jewish law and Scriptures (Luke 2:21). At the same time, it called attention to how Christ's coming transformed circumcision, proving it is not merely an outward sign but a circumcision of the heart (Romans 2:29). All my future wife could see was a long ornament with two balls and in the shape of a penis. In this Christmas season, let's not get so wrapped up in the ornaments themselves that we forget what they are meant to represent.

-Leopoldtulip