Christmas memories hang around the holidays

For most of the year, they remain tucked away, with the memories they carry tightly locked in a box stored in the attic.

But in December, they are once again on display. Ornaments. The following are stories about what some special ornaments mean to their owners. Do you have your own favorite? 

Round and round 

Indigo’s Denise and Greg Tanno remembered back to 1987 when they met. Greg was an insurance agent in Yonkers, N.Y., and Denise was an underwriter in Bridgeport, Conn. They did a lot of business on the phone, and they eventually decided they wanted to meet. They picked a mall in Danbury, Conn., that had a carousel as a centerpiece.

They were married two months later, two days after Christmas. Greg found a carousel Christmas ornament they hung on the tree that December and it has hung on their tree ever since. “That carousel was where we first saw each other,” Greg said.

Hooked by his struggles

When Brooke Diesel-Veith and her two children, Will and Caroline, were given Christmas ornaments at her husband, Cary Veith’s, company gathering two years ago, she didn’t think much of it at the time. But then she met one of her husband’s engineers, Dang Le, who works for her husband’s company, Esprix Technologies.

Le, who lived in Vietnam, told the story of how he escaped during the fall of Saigon in 1975, how he was separated from his family and the struggle for years to find them. Now the story comes back every time Brooke hangs the ornaments. “I can’t help but think of Dang and his ordeal,” she said. “He was 17, the same age that Will and Caroline (who are twins) are now.”

A leap in time 

In 2011, during the first year of Lakewood Ranch Gymnastics, owner Laura Parraga decided to add a Christmas tree to the lobby decor. There was one problem. She didn’t have enough ornaments to fill the 15-foot tree. So, she asked her gymnasts to donate an ornament from their personal collections.

Some of those youngsters have graduated. Others changed gyms or quit the sport. Still others, like Bri and Taylor Folkers, now 12 and 13, respectively, are still with the program. The sisters, who live in Mill Creek, decided to take a picture of themselves and gave it to Laura, who turned it into an ornament. “It’s cute, and a neat way to watch how the years have gone,” Laura said. “It shows how much we’ve grown (as a program) and how much the kids have grown, too. You don’t realize it until you see something like this, how much they have matured.”

Christmas surprise 

In early 2002, when Greenbrook resident Sue Sgro was pregnant

with her second child, she wanted to find out the baby’s gender. Her husband, Bill, did not. So Sue found out the secret and kept it hidden, deciding to go out buy a girl’s Christmas ornament, which she hid in the nursery.

It never came out until their daughter, Liz, was born the following Sept. 4. Sue unveiled the ornament, which now hangs on their tree. 

Tagged for love

When Hidden Oaks couple Amity Hoffman and Tony Dertouzos decorate their Christmas tree, an ornament reminds them of how they met in 1998. At the time, Tony worked for a Sarasota company called Alnitac and had agreed to pick up a client’s daughter — Amity — in Tampa as she arrived from Kansas for a summer internship at Florida Studio Theatre. Tony expected to never hear from Amity again, but he was wrong. She called him the next day.

In six months, they were engaged. During their courtship, Tony realized Amity had never removed the baggage tag off her suitcase from the day she arrived in Tampa. Without her knowledge, he sealed it away into a clear glass ornament and gave it to her for Christmas that year. “I knew it was pivotal — that one day we met,” Tony said.

Out of Africa

Greenbrook’s Rachel Weeks held the Christmas ornament she purchased while on a mission trip for Harvest United Methodist Church in 2014 to Quéssua, Angola. What’s special about it? “Well, first, you have to go to Africa to get it,” she said.

Weeks worked with teenaged boys who wanted to take up psychology as a career. She also taught them to play the piano. Meanwhile, she toiled in an area that had been ravaged by civil war. “It was devastating to see how their buildings had been bombed, with the beautiful mountains in the backdrop,” she said. “They way they were living was amazing. They washed outside and had no lights. You had to beware of snakes.”

Whenever Weeks looks at the ornament, she thinks of how grateful the Angolans were for everything. 

Ornament in fashion

Amanda Tullidge, an adviser for the Lakewood Ranch Community Fund, remembers the moment she received her first ornament from her mother, Julie Smith, in 1993. It was the first time Hallmark made a Barbie Christmas ornament.

“I was Barbie crazy,” Amanda said. “I still have it. It has the ’90s poinsettia shoulder pads and everything. “

Since that first Christmas in 1993, Amanda’s mother has given her a Barbie ornament every Christmas. “It has become a nice mother-daughter tradition,” Amanda said. “I love Christmas ornaments. Every one is a little memory. I always get really sentimental when we put our Christmas tree up.”