“The Island of Misfit Ornaments”

I mentioned in an earlier post about decorating the Christmas tree that “the island of misfit ornaments” was the designation my oldest son gave to some of our ornaments that were not quite picture perfect. Some of them got broken or misshapen over the years and we’ve just never gotten around to fixing them — I think when we get them out I’ll fix them some time during the season, and then when that doesn’t happen I think I’ll get to them before next year, but somehow I never throw them away. Others of them are just a little offbeat. But as we unpack the ornaments every year and ooh and ah over the pretty ones and remember the stories and significance behind several of them, we have a lot of fun with the “misfits” as well. I thought I’d show you some of them. I’ll forewarn you, though, that with teen/young adult boys, our sense of humor is a little warped.

This one used to be a little Nativity ornament.

We don’t hang this one any more. One year the roof broke off, and it looks like we lost Mary, or at least her head, along the way. My kids found this at the bottom of the box and were asking about it (I guess it has been so long since it was whole that they didn’t even remember it). As I was telling them what it used to be, Jeremy, my oldest, said it looked more like Abraham getting ready to sacrifice Isaac…

I mentioned in that earlier post that there was one angel whose head got separated from its body somehow, and the boys have done strange things with it every year since. One year they just hung the head as an ornament and placed another ornament that was a little hat on top of it. This is where it ended up this year:

I told them they reminded me of Sid on Toy Story.

These were little wax candle ornaments that we got our first Christmas together.

The brown-haired boy represented Jim, and the blond girl represented me. But one year they got a little melted up in the attic. I couldn’t even get them out of the plastic bags because they were stuck. I don’t know why I haven’t thrown them away. I put all my Christmas candles in a box in a storage closest now so they don’t melt any more up in the attic, and I keep these in with them.

I think one of the boys got this little misshapen bear at a school or Sunday School exchange. I don’t know what happened to him.

But they seem to have special affection for him.

Someone gave us this one year. Jason called her the octopus angel.

She looks a little depressed to me.

This was a little crystal angel whose lower end keeps getting broken off in pieces even though it is kept in its own little box.

This is what Jeremy did with it this year.

For those of you familiar with the BJU Unusual films, their logo was the angel flying with the video camera — this reminds me of that.

This is something Jesse made when he was little.

We have several kid-made ornaments like that that have their place of honor.

And there is nothing wrong with this one…I’ve just always thought it was a little strange.

Doesn’t every tree need a Hershey’s Kiss ornament?

Finally, I also told in that post about how we have a stray hook on the ceiling that the previous owners had, I think, a hanging lamp on. We’ve just never taken it out, and one year one of the boys put one of our snowflake ornaments on it. I fussed about it the first year, and then it became kind of a game every year to get it up there before I could say anything. I’ve accepted it now as one of our unique traditions.

You can also see in that picture that they put a little crown ornament I got on clearance last year on our angel tree topper.

I’ve always preferred that our tree be a meaningful family-oriented tree rather than a perfect decorator tree, but I’ll have to admit there have been some years I wished some of these remained in the box, or after everyone was done decorating I moved them to a less conspicuous place on the tree. But now I’ve pretty much embraced them as part of the fun of our particular tree decorations.

Do you have any offbeat or “misfit” ornaments?