Happy Holidays!
Whatever you celebrate, my family and I wish you all the best this holiday season!
In our family, one of our favorite things about the holidays is decorating our Christmas tree. That’s because all our ornaments are mementos from life events and our travels. For instance, when I was scouting book locations in Nashville this fall, we visited the Country Music Hall of Fame and picked up a platinum record ornament there.
Book-related ornaments and memories
A number of our ornaments are book-related. In the picture below, you can see four of them, including one based on the view of the Library of Congress’s dome from below. We toured the Library of Congress in 2023 during a vacation to DC. There, we saw where they keep the rare books, a location that was featured in the movie National Treasure.
Also on that trip to DC, we visited the Planet Word Museum, which has some great exhibits about languages around the world. My favorite exhibit broke down the origins of English words that came from Latin, French, German, Greek, and other languages. There, we got an ornament made from folded pages from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
This past January, I had the opportunity to speak at a conference in Odense, Denmark, which is home to the Hans Christian Andersen Museum. I hadn’t read any of his stories since I was a kid and was shocked by just how many children’s classics he’d written. They include The Little Mermaid, The Steadfast Tin Soldier, and The Ugly Duckling, which I learned was autobiographical. At the museum, I got a glass Hans Christian Anderson book ornament.
And lastly, during a road trip to North Carolina from Boston in 2024, we stopped in Richmond, Va., to visit the Poe Museum. He had a tough childhood and, to my surprise, was into astrology and space. There, we got one of our coolest ornaments. On one side are angels and the other (shown in the photo) are skulls and ravens.
I hope you made some good memories in 2025 and wish you good fortunes in 2026!
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