To those who decorate Very Perfect Christmas Trees, I bow down to such decor savvy. Normally I’d be all over the chic approach – except, over a lifetime, I have accumulated ornaments that match memories, but not each other.

Each year, there’s a woodlot tree (balsamic fir, if I can find it) strung with white lights, and then hung with the decades’ accumulated mishmash.

My very favourite ornaments are ones made by my mother for sale at her church Christmas Bazaar: pasta angels. I have five of them, who live most of the year rolled in tissue in a resealable plastic bag. My mother would have made these three decades ago, and she died in 2001, so there is no replacing them. They are showing signs of wear: one is missing a macaroni arm, another part of a halo. But, when I look at them, I see my mother’s hand-drawn sweet faces, the patience she must have had to paint and glue these finicky wee things, and she is there with me, in that moment.

My least-attractive ornament is also a memory of mom: a chartreuse green ball topped by a white ribbon, onto which a slip of paper bearing my mother’s name has been glued. In her church, those who died within the previous year had their “memorial ball” added to the Christmas tree and, at end of the holiday season, that ornament went to the family. It’s one of the first ornaments I put up, discreetly toward the back.

There are, of course, giraffes, the least-likely of Christmas animals, given to me by friends and families over the years who know I collect them. My father liked cardinals, and my partner is fond of hedgehogs and roosters, so those woodland and barnyard creatures nestle in the tree, as well.

There are ornaments that mark a memory of a place lived: a maple syrup jug for my hometown of Elmira, Ontario; Amos Pewter in memory of my university years in Nova Scotia. My most recent home of Toronto has added a red streetcar and a street sign ornament from my Cabbagetown neighbourhood.

Amid the mix are handmade ornaments from young family members, some now not so young: origami birds; a nursery-school hard-baked green heart; colourful pipe cleaners twisted into a candy cane or sunburst, that one representing the return of light after winter solstice.

Most of the ordinary balls and shiny bits are from my parents: my mother went for the chic look in her last decades, festooning an elegant tree with white and glass baubles, and she passed on some coloured and patterned balls from the ’60s and ’70s to me. Even with many years of accidental breakage – these balls generally do not survive a bump or slipping off the tree – there are enough to add some needed colour and shine.

Mom, who was an all-out Christmas decorator, thought I should have an ornament collection of my own when I first set up an apartment after university and she bought me a set of miniature musical instruments, to which she added, over the years. I had played trumpet in high school, sang in choirs, and accumulated a minor in music during my university days, so she thought, correctly, that I would enjoy music motifs.

There are moments when I look at my tree and think, crikey, this thing really needs more stuff: ribbons and tinsel and feathers, oh my. Maybe someday. But, for now, it’s a walk down memory lane, step by step, as I hang each creature and trumpet and mid-century glass ball.

All photos: Kelley Teahen