i
The Birth of the Ornament
From gilded nuts to silvered glass: how the ornament became an object at all
ii
The Christmas Traditions
The pickle, the spider's web, the first ornament of the year, and which stories survive scrutiny
A tradition is a story a family tells with its hands. Some of the stories in this chapter are old and true. Some are old and half-true. At least one famous one is almost certainly a salesman's invention that became true later, because enough families kept it. We think readers who love this subject deserve to know which is which, and we've found the real stories are better than the invented ones anyway.
From the Collection
The pickle, with its printed legend
Sold with the story attached. Whether the story is true is Chapter VII's favorite question.
