Many people my age don’t put up a Christmas tree and I struggle with this decision each year. I am usually done in by the Christmas box.

On the top shelf, unreachable without a stepstool, is the Christmas box. You probably have one or two of these. Opening that box, hauled from way back in the closet, is like opening a door to past lives. Maybe this year I can just leave the box alone and not have a tree. After all, there will be no small children around. And as we’ve all heard and said, Christmas is for children.

The contents of the Christmas box may change my mind, as I discover things that conjure up memories of days gone by. Here are the very old glass ornaments, with badly chipped paint, that once hung on Christmas trees in the Kelley living room when I was a child. They followed me around for 40 years.

At Christmas in 1968, I was living in a town near Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota. My son was a month old and one cold, windy day in December, a package arrived from Maine. Inside, my mother had included mittens, ribbon candy and several tissue-wrapped ornaments that surely made me homesick. Eventually, we left South Dakota and moved to Illinois and from there, back to Maine, usually carrying our most important belongings in a couple of suitcases. Among those belongings were the old, worn, priceless glass ornaments.

Packed in the Christmas box, too, is the first of many gifts, inscribed “Mother,” made by my son at school. A cookbook covers made of wallpaper and tied with yarn, is filled with recipes from my son’s classmates, carefully printed. About half the recipes are for Italian sandwiches and the rest for cookies or whoopie pies. It’s really amusing to read these, especially since they’re signed by kids who are now parents, firefighters and movers and shakers around town.

There are several ornaments made in classrooms, including red and green construction-paper chains, odd-shaped paper sculpture, liberally sprinkled with glitter; hand-crafted, cloth-covered Styrofoam balls; angels of every persuasion; and legless/armless reindeer and snowmen, made from pipe cleaners, cotton balls and scraps of cloth.

Who could resist erecting a fireproof (not real) little tree just to have a place to display such a collection?

When I have finished perusing the contents of the Christmas box, and set aside some things that undoubtedly should have vanished many seasons ago (but may yet be given a reprieve from ornament heaven), I’ll decide whether to move the chair in the corner, stack the magazines somewhere else and find a table on which to put the tree and the collection of memories.

Tucked away in this box are last year’s Christmas cards. I’m one of those who saves the cards but hardly ever the envelope, so when I start making my card list this year, it is with good intentions, but old addresses. Fortunately, most of my across-America friends now have email. This year’s early resolution is to actually make a list. We will see.

Meanwhile, the decision awaits. Tree or no tree? Shall I once again repair the old glass ornaments and for the 47th time, place them carefully on the inside branches, where they’ll be safe for another year? I think that’s a definite possibility.

Kay Soldier welcomes reader ideas for column topics of interest to seniors. She can be reached by email at kso48@aol.com, or write to 114 Tandberg Trail, Windham, ME 04062.