Ornament Day at library is a memory-maker

Children and their grown-ups made more than pretty things for the Christmas tree on Ornament Days at the libraries in Marianna and Graceville this year; they were making memories as they dabbled in the paint, glitter, glue and paper.

Debra Hinson stood by in the Marianna branch Thursday, ready to lend a helping hand if needed as two of her granddaughters worked. They assembled an elaborate ornament made of sky-blue sheets of paper. After 12-year-old Karissa Mercer cut the paper into their appropriate shapes, 9-year-old Karlee Mercer taped them together. They worked independently but side-by-side on some other projects, as well.

Watching them brought memories back to Hinson. With tenderness and smiles, she recalled the days long ago when the girls’ mother, Stephanie, and her siblings made clothespin reindeer and other ornaments to hang on their Christmas tree at home.

She said the Ornament Day tradition she and her grandchildren started this year is one of many treasured activities she shares with the youngsters.

Debbie Giles helped her 10-year-old son Joe and nine-year-old daughter Mandie as they put together an assortment of construction paper Christmas trees and other items. She remembers her own childhood of creative holiday endeavors, and said her mother still hangs her homemade ornaments on her tree in Colorado each year.

She’s been bringing Joe and Mandie to Ornament Day since the tradition started in Jackson County several years ago, and said she will hang their ornaments on her tree as long as she lives.

As she unwraps the stored ornaments each year, memories sparkle like icicles in her mind’s eye. Their earliest ornaments are crudely cut, the work of the smallest, most inexperienced hands. As the years passed, she can see how their work matured as their motor skills improved with age and experience. She wouldn’t trade the homemade ornaments for the finest designer set in the world.

She said her own mother still hangs the ornaments she made as a child 20 to 25 years ago. When Giles visits her mother in Colorado, as a parent herself now, she fully understands why her mother still display s those ornaments with care even though her children are grown with homes and children of their own.

At another table, 11-yeaer-old Michelle Tharp was putting her artistic talents to use and her grandmother Alice Tharp and aunt Faith Tharp looked on. Her family still tops their tree with the cardboard-and-tin foil star she made at home when she was 5 years old. This year’s ornaments will have their special place, as well. Their tree has been up since before Halloween, at Michelle’s request. That’s a tradition the family has kept ever since she first asked, as a very small child, for that early start on Christmas. Their white tree has blue lights, homemade ornaments that Michelle made, and those her mother and aunt made in their childhood, along with candy canes, blue and silver commercially-produced ball ornaments.

Wanda Biggs, a library employee, slipped into the ornament room for a moment to watch her grandchildren work. The Barnes boys, Richie, 5, Rylan, 4, and Rathan, 3, were busily crafting their ornaments, with an occasional assist from their mother, Amber Barnes, and with encouragement from their “Nana” Biggs.

Across the room, Laura Clikas watched the creative efforts of her son Jac, 10, and daughter Zoe, 7. Both of them have been coming to the library Ornament Day since they were 5 and 2 years old, respectively. She has plenty of their older ornaments to hang this year, a task she takes great pleasure in as she recalls the days they were made.

The Clikas youngsters shared a table with Sarah and Paige Passmore, 7 and 5 years old, respectively. The Passmore girls were working close to their dad, Danny, the only man in the mix this day. He was happy to be elbow deep in glue and paper; it gave him one more opportunity to bond with his girls.