Holiday Gifts30 April 20265 min read
Christmas Traditions You Can Hold
The psychology of ornament traditions — and why the decorations with names on them are the ones that never get thrown out.
In most families there's a box of decorations that will never be replaced, no matter how tatty it gets. Look inside and you'll find the same thing: names, dates, tiny handprints. Objects that hold people.
An ornament with a name on it performs a small magic trick every December — it makes the person present, even when they're interstate, overseas, or no longer here.
Starting the tradition is simple: one ornament per family member, added to each year. New baby, new name on the tree. It takes about three years for the collection to feel inevitable.
Our advice: buy the year's ornaments in November. Every December we watch hundreds of orders race our cutoff date, and Christmas is a deadline we can't move.