Groveport Messenger - December 25th, 2022

PAGE 8 - GROVEPORT MESSENGER - December 25, 2022
I am a hard-core, tradition-driven holiday decorator.
My love of Christmas dates
back decades and many of the
knick-knacks and baubles that
hung on my tree as a child made
the journey through time and
space to the house I call home.
A partially burnt candle in the
shape of a fireplace and chimney,
with a single strand of greenery
and a tiny Merry Christmas banner, has a special
place in a hutch once owned by my grandparents. The
red brick has faded to a light pink, but a small faux fire
decal still shines bright.
Next to the candle is a jumbo pine cone with a face
crafted out of simple cotton and smaller pinecone arms
holding a decorated candle. It was given to me when I
was six years old and spent a summer visiting Vienna
with my mother. The pine cone was plucked from a forest
in Austria and, in the early 1960s when I received
it, was already decades old.
On top of my tree is a celluloid Santa face mounted
on an eight inch round pleated aluminum circle. It
crowned my childhood Christmas trees.
When I got married in the mid-1970s, my beloved
tree topper was passed on to me by my parents. Santa
once had a full curly beard, but lost some of his luster
over the years as the glue holding him to the metal circle
dried and his fiberglass curls fell off.
Last year, the topper got a makeover, but with modern
materials, the beard is not as curly and shiny.
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Traditional decorations connect to the past
Places
Linda
Dillman
Perched on top of a hutch in another room is a sad
little 18-inch tree that most people–but not me–
would have tossed in the trash years ago. Its 20
branches of a green, cellophane-like material function
as needles mounted on thin wire branches, albeit
noticeably thinner as the years move on.
A block of green painted wood serves as the base
and still bears the original Grants (a long gone S. High
St. store in Great Southern Shopping Center) price
sticker–a princely one dollar.
The sticker is a reminder of my seven-year-old self,
who saved up chore money to buy the little tree. It
traveled across America and the Pacific ocean to Japan
before making it back home to Ohio for good.
Gold garland is draped around the tree in our den–
the one that stands guard over our presents until
Christmas Day–and is another childhood holdover.
The garland, like the little tree from Grants, has also
lost a lot of its original luster. It’s been cobbled back
together over the decades as portions of the string
holding it in one piece become weak and break. It now
sheds more than our dog, but I would never replace the
garland (nor the dog). It is too precious and even in its
state of disrepair,
I continue to see its beauty.
Shiny new ornaments, sturdy modern faux trees,
tree toppers and garlands that don’t shed are nice.
However, there is nothing like looking at their older,
aging counterparts and taking comfort in knowing that
they are a link to the past and a keeper of memories for
the future.
Linda Dillman is a Messenger staff writer.
Our Pictorial Past by Rick Palsgrove
Church sanctuary
Photo courtesy of the Groveport Heritage Museum
This is the sanctuary of the Groveport Zion Lutheran Church as it looked in the early to mid-20th century.
Visible in the photo are the altar, the pulpit, and pews. The congregation formed in 1911 and originally met
for services in Groveport Town Hall and later Bigelow Hall until it built a church on the northwest corner
of Main and Center streets at a cost of $20,000. The church was dedicated in 1918 and served the congregation
until the late 1960s/early 1970s when a new Lutheran church was built at 6014 Groveport Road. The
former Lutheran church at Main and Center streets is now home to the Gateway Church congregation.