A Bouquet of Thanks

I always loved the past and that devotion led me to collecting old clocks and before long, I opened an antique shop called, Once Upon A Time.

Over the years, I’ve been all over North America tracking down antique timepieces, and in the pursuit of my passion, ended up in Brooklyn one rainy day bidding on the contents of a storage unit.

It was an educated guess that led me there.

Walter Abercrombie owned an antiquarian bookstore—an island of culture in a joyless wasteland of commercial buildings, and he occasionally came across some lovely finds which he passed on to me, for a price, of course.

Walter passed away on Thanksgiving and the heirs of his estate auctioned off all his stock. I knew he owned the storage locker and was hoping I might make one last find.

I bought the contents for a mere two hundred dollars, but when the locker was opened, it contained only a chest filled with antique Victorian Christmas tree ornaments. I knew nothing of their provenance, or why Walter even bothered to pay rent to store them.

I was chagrined, but in a way I was thankful, because I now owned a share of a Dicken’s Christmas fantasy.

So, that first Christmas I put a pine tree in the store, and decorated it with the ornaments. There were about three-dozen tin clip-on candleholders, and so, I felt I had to use them to add to the charm.

When the candles were lit, the effect was magic. People crowded around the window of the shop gazing in at the beauty of the tree—and my walk-in business tripled during the time the tree was up.

But then, a curious thing happened. One of my customers, who often browsed but never bought, seemed obsessed by the tree. She came in every day on her lunch and would stand there staring in awe.

I struck up a conversation with her, and over the course of a week learned her sad tale. It turned out she had been seeing a man and the engagement fell through. She had been quite despondent, even to the point of contemplating suicide, but when she saw the tree, her depression lifted.

She had been coming in daily because as she told me, it was the only thing that kept her going.

That’s when I got the inspiration.

I gave her a glass ornament—a long-tailed bird. They were popular in Dicken’s time because they were seen on Queen Victoria’s tree.

The woman was overjoyed with the gift and left with a beautiful light in her eyes. When I saw her three months later, she was engaged again and very happy.

This event was not a singular occurrence, but happened regularly over the years.

Invariably, just after Thanksgiving, I would decorate a tree and a sad or lonely person would be drawn to it and make a daily pilgrimage to view it.

I would gift them with an ornament, and their fortunes would change.

In twenty years of decorating the tree, the pattern repeated itself exactly, every time.

Now, I’m not attaching magical properties to the ornaments, but I do know that things often become infused with an aura.

Most people say this is nonsense, but I disagree. For instance, I don’t know anybody who would wear a sweater worn by a serial killer or rapist. Well, isn’t that the same thing—the belief that some object has been blessed or contaminated by the owner’s spirit in some way?

All I know is that everyone to whom I’ve given an ornament has been blessed.

I’ve thought and thought about this over the years and I’ve come to agree with the views of G. K. Chesterton who wrote a delightful essay called The Logic of Elfland. In the essay Chesterton says:

My first and last philosophy, that which I believe in with unbroken certainty, I learnt in the nursery. Old nurses do not tell children about the grass, but about the fairies that dance on the grass; and the old Greeks could not see the trees for the dryads.

Chesterton goes on to prove that the logic of fairy tales is not only reasonable, but also necessary, and I totally agree.

The same magical aura that attaches to childhood stories, also attaches to traditions surrounding our major feasts like Christmas and Thanksgiving.

We all want to be transported beyond the mundane—if only for a moment.

We all want feast days to be special—to begin the same way—Once upon a time, and to end with the satisfaction that, we all lived happily ever after.

I want that and wish no less for my customers.