The Christmas Tradition: 2015

I've written before about our family's tradition of buying a Hallmark Christmas ornament for each member of the family (here and here). Sadly, our local Hallmark store closed shortly after Christmas 2013, meaning that the annual trip to the mall has been replaced by the annual visit to Hallmark.com. I don't much care for the mall, but it's not nearly as fun to buy the ornaments online.

We bought our ornaments a little earlier this year. Last year we waited too long and there was a shortage of the Frozen ornaments that our daughters wanted so badly. They weren't available online (another problem with not having a nearby Hallmark store), so my mother in San Diego did her grandmotherly duty and harassed every Hallmark store in her area until she could get a couple.

Hallmark has continued the line of Star Trek characters that started with Captain Kirk in 2010. Although I'm not particularly enthusiastic about any of the Original Series characters besides Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and Scotty, I'm still a hopeless collector. Of course I bought Sulu last year and Uhura this year. And I can guarantee that I'll be buying Chekov next year.

Unlike the past few years, which have had some rather mediocre Star Wars ornaments, this year has some pretty good ones. I ended up buying Kylo Ren; Episode VII's mysterious Sith lord. There were several other Star Wars ornaments that I would have loved to get (especially the Y-Wing), but I'm not quite willing to spend $15 to $30 each on even more ornaments that will sit in a box for 11 months out of each year.

As usual, the children were allowed to choose their own ornaments. And again, I'm proud of the oldest daughter's choice. Two years ago, she was the one who chose the Bilbo Baggins ornament. She still loves The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, so of course she wanted Smaug this year.

If only the other children had such good taste.