The Craftiest Workshop

Growing up in my family there were six of us kids. When I was young, I remember us having a real tree at Christmas and all of us would decorate it together.

We had the usual glass and silk Christmas balls but we also had these thin plywood hand painted ornaments. One was a drum, another a reindeer and there were the three kings.

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I remember the kings by the color of their robes; red, blue and green. I am not really sure which one was Caspar, Melchior or Balthasar. In our house they were just “the kings”.

This was the late 1970’s and early 80’s. There were no cell phones or computers and most families didn’t have video game consoles. At Christmas, to pass the time, we would play “Hide the Kings”. We would take turns hiding and then finding the kings in the Christmas tree. It was always in the evening by the light of the Christmas tree lights so it wasn’t as easy as it sounds. The kings were only as long as your pinky finger, not much wider and very thin.

When we got older and all of us had moved away from home, the kings remained amongst our parent’s decorations. One year, when my children were small, I asked if I could borrow the kings. I wanted my kids to play the same game I had as a child so long ago. I also wanted something as a reminder from home as we rarely travelled that far at Christmas when we lived in Ontario.

The kings stayed with us until I mailed them back to my parents as part of my Twelve Days of Christmas gift one year. My mom mailed them back a few years later. As the years passed, our ornament collection grew with our kids getting a new ornament each year. The kings ended up staying in the box with other ornaments that Chris and I have been given over the years. Eventually, when our children leave home with their ornaments, ours will go back on the tree.

Last year, with everyone staying home because of COVID, our extended family met on Zoom on Boxing Day. Everyone took turns sharing a favourite Christmas memory. My brother, Greg, brought up the kings and how much he enjoyed playing the game as a child. I went in the basement, brought up the box that the kings were in and showed everyone as not all of the grandchildren knew what he was talking about.

After that Zoom call, I decided to mail the kings to Greg. Before doing that, I traced each king, with lines for the beards and clothes. I then took a picture of each on both sides. After mailing the originals, I set to work making five sets of copies; one for each of the five siblings that did not have the originals.

I traced the outline onto plywood then cut out the fifteen kings using the band saw. After sanding down the edges I traced the features onto them using carbon paper. Using my wood burner, I burned the lines and edges. Next, I chose paint, as close to the original colors as I could get, and painted in the features. I even found some embroidery thread as a close match to the original string.

Greg received his kings in the mail on Jan.6, 2021. The kings arrived on Epiphany! He was very touched by the gesture.

Here we are almost a year later and I recently sent the four other sets of kings off to my siblings. My younger brother, Doug, received his last Friday and Russell just yesterday. Keith and Lisa haven’t yet reached out to say theirs have arrived but hopefully they made it safe and sound. Greg has the original set but now everyone has their own set to bring back memories or play the game. We are all now the “Keepers of the Kings”.