Betsy-Tacy Ornament Exchange

I love the season of Advent, the weeks leading up to Christmas. I love organizing our church's Mitten Tree for the homeless and our caroling to shut-ins; I love listening to Handel's Messiah on my car's CD player, and baking my mother's Christmas cookies, and lighting candles in the sanctuary on the holy night of Christmas Eve. And I ADORE being part of an ornament exchange organized for ardent fans of the Betsy-Tacy books of Maud Hart Lovelace, which happen to be my favorite books of all books ever written.

In Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown, my favorite title in this favorite series, Betsy, Tacy, and Tib invite their friend Winona to join them in their annual Christmas shopping, where they each bring only a single dime to make a single purchase - of a Christmas ornament. "Nothing," Tacy explains, "is so much like Christmas as a Christmas-tree ornament." 

In the Betsy-Tacy ornament exchange, we are each assigned our ornament recipient; then we try to find an ornament that connects in some way with the books and send it to the recipient, but as one of the series characters to another. 

Here are the ornaments I've received in recent years. 

This one was sent from Betsy to Joe, the boy whom she meets at the start of Heaven to Betsy (as he is eating an apple!) and marries in Betsy's Wedding. 

This next one took my breath away because I could hardly believe such a perfect Betsy-Tacy ornament could exist in the world. In Heaven to Betsy, Betsy's friends Cab, Herbert, and Tony make fried egg sandwiches for her family for "Sunday night lunch." Tony asks, "Do you like your eggs flopped or unflopped? Speak quick." So I was stunned when I opened the package to find this ornament sent by Cab, Herbert, and Tony to Betsy!

Betsy wants to be a writer, and she scribbles her stories on the promotional pads her father brings home to her from his shoe store, with covers that say, "Ray's Shoe Store. Wear Queen Quality Shoes." A beautiful pencil ornament came to Betsy last year with this neatly typed letter from the owner of Queen Quality Shoes, which wins my prize for most creative Betsy-Tacy ornament-letter ever:

Queen Quality Shoes
1371 North South Street West
St. Paul, Minnesota

Dec. 20, 1905

Mr. Bob Ray
Ray’s Shoe Store
157 Front Street
Deep Valley, Minnesota

Dear Mr. Ray:

Allow me to introduce myself. I am Alden Gildersleeve, owner of Queen Quality Shoes. The Queen Quality salesman for the Deep Valley region, Harvey Fangschlyster, tells me your young daughter Betsy intends to be a writer and, to that end, makes use of our promotional notepads.

As a man who enjoys the written word, this pleases me and I would like to encourage her literary endeavors. Harvey also told me your amusing story about the holiday shopping Betsy and her friends do each year. I thought I would add to the fun by sending her a pencil to go with those notepads.

My best regards to her and, of course, to you, one of my best customers. 

With warm wishes for a Merry Christmas and a happy and prosperous new year, I remain,

Yours truly

Alden Gildersleeve

AG:kw

I thought no ornament could equal the perfection of these three, but this year a small package arrived yesterday, sent from Tacy to Betsy in remembrance of their many performances of Rossini's Cat Duet. Here is Lois Lenski's illustration of their debut Cat Duet: 

Here is the fabulously wonderful ornament I received:

It is true that nothing is so much like Christmas as a Christmas-tree ornament - especially an ornament sent from one book lover to another.