A GRIMM CHRISTMAS: TRIMMING THE TREE WITH ORNAMENTS OF THE PAST

Jane Grimm's favorite antique Christmas ornament is one she calls "The Little Girl." It is a glass head of a china-doll child with separate glass eyes that move with the gentle sway of the ornament. The little girl's round face and earnest eyes look almost adoringly at her owner.

"I think she's just beautiful," said Grimm as she removed the fragile ornament from a year-round display case in the dining room.

Her husband, Missouri Court of Appeals Judge Stanley A. Grimm, started a collection of rare and unique Christmas ornaments about 15 years ago after discovering a set of Noma bubble lights in an old box.

"This hobby is really my husband's, but over the years I've become more and more interested in collecting antique ornaments and decorations," she said.

It started when she accompanied her husband to an exhibition of antique Christmas ornaments a few years ago. "I told Stan that I would just take a walk or read a book while he was inside. But as I looked around, I found myself becoming very interested."

Over the years, the collection has grown to include dozens of delicate, beautiful ornaments, two feather trees and several free-standing Christmas decorations.

This year, the Grimms got out their Christmas decorations early. Their home was featured on the Lutheran Family and Children's Services Holiday Home Tour Nov. 28.

Near the front entrance of the Grimm home stands a quaint miniature village setting, complete with deer crossing a frozen pond.

"The houses are Japanese," she explains. "They were made in the 1950s. The houses are cardboard and covered with a rough, sandpaper-like material with cellophane in the windows."

The little houses were popular under Christmas trees as well as in village settings, Grimm said. The tiny town is accented with antique bottle-brush trees with snow-laden branches.

Most of the Grimm ornaments date back to the 1930s and '40s. Many of them are displayed yearly on the two feather trees the Grimms own.

"Feather trees were made in the mid-1920s," Grimm said. "They were originally designed to be table-top trees which could be easily stored. They were the original artificial trees."

Feather trees consist of a dowel pole serving as the trunk, with several protruding wire branches covered with green-dyed goose or turkey feathers.

"They are really pretty ugly trees, but they're great for displaying the old ornaments," she said. "The branches were placed far apart so that people could put candles on (them)."

A five-foot feather tree stands in Stanley Grimm's study. It is decorated with ornaments which look drastically different from the Hallmark ornaments of today.

After a story about the Grimm ornament collection ran in the Southeast Missourian about five years ago, Cape Girardeau resident Esther Kirby called to offer the Grimms her two-foot feather tree, which she had not moved from her attic for years. Now the tiny tree sits on a table in the living room, displaying some of the family's favorite ornaments.

Many of the ornaments which hang from the branches of the trees are as unusual as they are old. There are little glass mushrooms, a teapot, birds with plumed tails made of spun-glass threads, a court jester, and Santa Clauses which reveal the evolution of Kris Kingle's lore.

One of the most unusual ornaments is a pink snake wound in a corkscrew position.

"The snake ornaments symbolize the story of Adam and Eve and our being saved from sin," said Grimm. "A great many of the old ornaments have religious significance."

The old ornaments are made of glass, paper and some early plastics, making them as fragile as they are beautiful.

The Grimms' tiny feather tree in the living room is surrounded by an even tinier fence, containing several finely detailed sheep figurines with real wool coats and little wooden legs.

"A lot of the feather trees were circled with these little fences with animals or whole villages inside," Grimm said. "The scene was called a `putz.'"

The Grimms have yet another Christmas tree in the downstairs, this one a more traditional artificial tree boasting Stanley Grimm's coveted collection of bubble lights. The brightly-colored lights are accented by a group of ornaments originally used in about the same time period.

"The bubble lights were very popular during the 1950s," she said. "A chemical heats up inside the lights and causes them to bubble."

Off to the side of the '50s tree is a collection of antique Santa Claus figures.

"If you look at them all in a row like this you can see how much they have changed over the years," said Grimm. "Some of them are made out of celluloid -- an early plastic. Others are made of metal or wood."

Nearby the Santas stands a reproduction of an early feather tree Jane Grimm bought for her husband shortly after he started collecting ornaments.

"Stanley really wanted a feather tree and we couldn't find one anywhere, so I ordered this for him," she said. In keeping with the theme set forth by all her trees, the feather tree reproduction is laden with reproduced antique ornaments the Grimms have collected.

Standing underneath this little feather tree is a menagerie of miniature plastic animals, lined up to look out onto the room.

The Grimms also have a cardboard Nativity set in another room which was popular in the 1940s and 1950s.

Stanley Grimm sometimes gets his ornaments at exhibitions, but most often will opt to buy a box of old Christmas decorations at public auctions, taking his chances on finding something special.

Every year the Grimms put up a real Christmas tree in their living room and decorate it with an accumulation of family ornaments from the years when the Grimm children were growing up.

"We really love Christmas," she said. "For us, it's a very special time of year."