The Lifesaving Magic of Storytelling

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Continuing on from Monday’s Christmassy theme, yesterday I decorated my tree. Like lot of people, I’ve had many of my decorations for years and years — decades — and each of them have their own little story or a memory attached to them.

There is the plastic Father Christmas on his sleigh pulled by two reindeer who is almost (coughs) fifty years old. As a child I remember he used to have a pile of plastic presents on the back of his sleigh that have obviously been lost over the decades. There are also the messy paper decorations that my daughter made at nursery, and my favourite tin soldiers.

There is one wooden decoration which is one of my most treasured, a wreath of holly and inside it, a dove – suspended so it twists and turns and appears to fly – holds an olive branch in its beak above the word ‘peace’.

As I placed it on my tree I thought ‘if I just…