I’ll Take the Jacked-Up, Overloaded Jensen Tree

One of my favorite family traditions is decorating the Christmas tree! And not just because I love Christmastime – the festive decorations, the music, the gifts, the sugary treats, the “over-the-top” excitement of the kids, and (most importantly!) the celebration of the birth of Jesus — I love decorating the tree because it’s a time of remembering and reflection.

And strangely, it’s a time to celebrate imperfection.

Instead of buying a t-shirt or post card from places we go, we buy an ornament instead. It takes up little space, and every year we can unpack it and get swept away in memories.

So, we have ornaments from all the places we have been, we have ornaments for events (births, deaths, moves, baptisms, adoptions, etc.), and sometimes we have ornaments that just represent things we love.

I know these are just “things” but they give us such a beautiful opportunity to tell stories, to remember, and to express ourselves. When I think about things that recharge my batteries and get me excited about life, it can be captured in our ornament tradition.

Stories:

I grew up in the South, in a family of storytellers. We used to sit around and listen to my Grandpa Riddle tell stories, and sometimes he would be laughing so hard as he recounted those tales, we could hardly understand him. But it didn’t matter – his laughter and enthusiasm was so contagious.

My kids love to hear stories, especially stories about when they were babies. I think we long to know who we are, where we came from, why we matter. And this is why the story of Jesus is so important – without that love story, we will never fully understand our worth.

Our ornament tradition gives us a fresh opportunity to tell stories, including the amazing story of Jesus – not just an important part of history, but still “living and active” in our lives today.

And now the kids are old enough to tell stories too. They can remember when and why we bought certain ornaments. They can explain why they picked a specific one or remember a friend or family member who gave us a special ornament.

Keith recounts his childhood and remembers his Dad, (Bob Jensen) who passed away this year, as he puts these birds on the tree (he and his sister, Gail, used to fight over who got to put them on the tree).

I tell stories of our daughter, Casey, as I hang an ornament she picked out on a trip to Wyoming when she was only 16 and obsessed with surfing.

We celebrate how God formed our family as we unpack ornaments we bought in China, when Carlie was adopted, and the ornaments we bought the year the twins were born.

“The human mind is a story processor, not a logic processor.” (The Righteous Mind, Johnathan Haidt)   I feel like our best chance of building character, instilling a love for God and creating a strong family is through interactions and traditions that give us opportunities to tell our stories (remember who we are and whose we are).

Unique Beauty:

The ornaments help us appreciate the beauty of different parts of our country and world, but also our own unique personalities. I see people with trees decorated in matching themes or colors, but I love our patchwork tree because of what it represents.

Keith has created a tradition of taking the kids to a local ornament store where he lets them pick our anything they want. This has become such a joy because their personalities have emerged through the ornaments they pick. Luke always picks something sports related – he has a baseball, basketball, golf ball, etc. Carlie always picks a beautiful, delicate bird of some sort, usually with real feathers. And Lela, well, she picks things worthy of her expressive personality – the first year it was a peacock (perfect metaphor!), the next year a cupcake with frosting in the design of a cat’s face (I don’t know . . .) and last year she picked a dancing leprechaun (??).

It’s easy to pick out the ornaments that represent each family member. For example, my “signature” ornament is a flashing “hot light” ornament from Krispy Kreme (I know, sad that that’s my signature, but there are some things we can’t deny.  Note the Starbucks cup just below – this is the “consumerist/naughty vice” section of the tree).

And now we’re in the stage where the kids make ornaments to go on the tree. They are imperfect and garish, but the kids love them, and they are beautiful to this mama, so we proudly display them.

Our tree represents our family.

It’s messy and mismatched.

It’s tacky and weird.

And it is absolutely beautiful!!

I don’t want some perfect Pinterest tree. I’ll take the jacked-up, overloaded Jensen tree.

Because I love a good story. I love being able to look at the tree and tell you about each person in the family. I love tracking the travels and the important moments of our lives.

I want our children to feel the freedom to express themselves and sometimes it starts with little things, like picking out any ornament they want, putting it anywhere on the tree that they want (even if it’s in a ridiculous cluster), and telling the story of what it means to them. We need practice expressing our imperfect, weird, authentic, beautiful selves.

Because life isn’t perfect, but it’s beautiful.  “. . .the demand for the perfect is often the greatest enemy of the good.” (Richard Rohr, Falling Upward)

“God comes to us disguised as our life.” (Paula D’Arcy) Life that can be haphazardly traced on our jacked-up, overloaded Jensen tree.

Wishing you a merry and messy, jolly and jacked-up, perfectly imperfect Christmas!