This year there will be fifteen silver bells on the “crystal tree” in our living room. Yes, fifteen little bells will tinkle when shaken, each metallic peel recounting the fifteen years I have spent in the United States of America. Even as I take each little bauble out of its tissued nest, year after year, while snowflakes powder my window sill and a sole blood-red cardinal feasts on the holly berry bushes at our porch, the memories come to me so vividly–some moving, others merry–of my immigrant Christmases in the West.

Realizing that I was leaving a lifetime of festive traditions behind when I arrived in New York, fifteen years ago, I resolved to create my own new ones. In New York, barely had the Thanksgiving turkey been served up cold on leftover tables than fat Santas filled glittering shop fronts and the cheery notes of Silver Bells reminded me that it was “Christmas time in the city”. I knew then that my days of sitting at my mother’s feet and curling kulkuls around silver forks or deep-frying chaklis in vats of smoldering oil were over. It was time to start a few good traditions of my own to blend in with the culture of the foreign land I had chosen to make my home. And just when I was planning to buy a cookie press to learn how to make America’s favorite holiday treat, in lieu of nankatai or neurees, a parcel arrived for me in the mail from friends in California. It was meant to be a “Welcome to the US Present” and Jim and Ruth Grady thought it best to send me a surprise to coincide with Jesus’ birthday.

It was the first present I had ever received in the mail. I can remember the joyous excitement with which I tore through endless layers of polystyrene peanuts and yards of bubble wrap to get to the enticing gold-foil box in the very depths. Stuck to the box with Scotch tape was a card that read, “To Mark Your First Christmas in the USA. With all our love”. On opening the box, with shaking fingers, I discovered the “Snowflake Bell”. It was the tiniest little wonder you ever did see. Intricate silver filigree glistened in my hand as I turned the three-dimensional snowflake around. Hanging from a tiny hook in the center was a darling silver bell with the year “1989” engraved on it. I shook it gently and gasped in wonder. It had the clearest little ring. Halfway around the world, away from my parents and my beloved Bombay for the very first Christmas of my life, weighed down by homesickness, loneliness and an acute sense of alienation, the soothing tones of that miniscule bell comforted me in a way that is still inexplicable. Right then, as the little present revealed itself to me in all its myriad shiny facets, a tradition was born. That was it, I decided. Every year, from then on, I bought a silver bell, each one engraved with the year on it, to mark the passing of yet another eventful four seasons in my life in a new country. Hard to believe that there are fifteen little miracles of time on my tree this year. Where have the years flown?

With every passing year, I patronized a different Silver company. The Snowflake Bell made by American silversmiths, Reed and Barton, was the first of many others, each one documenting important milestones in my brand-new life. One year there was the ball-like bell from Wallace Silversmith to coincide with the achievement of my doctorate. To celebrate the year of my wedding, Towle provided me with a musical bell that plays Joy to the World every time the tiny key in the base is wound. From Gorham, I purchased a bell with three other miniature bells in the handle to symbolize my daughter’s graduation from college. Lillian Vernon’s littlest one is punctured with Christmas trees that march around the circumference, denoting the beginning of a new job for my husband. Lunt manufactured an intricate one encased in crystal, reminiscent of the year I took the oath to become an American citizen. There is an extra-large one that weighs the branches down from Kirk Stieff suggesting our move from city to country, from apartment to house. To mark the millennium, a very special year indeed, I splurged on a sterling silver bell from ritzy Tiffany and Company on Fifth Avenue feeling a little bit like Holly Golightly in Truman Capote’s classic novel Breakfast at Tiffany’s as I surveyed my choices in the meticulously polished glass cases. Each year when the Christmas catalogs come flooding into my mailbox, I curl up and select the bell that will record yet another year’s passing, yet another significant event that has lit up our lives.

As time went by, new places had to be discovered to best showcase my growing collection. The trio of bells that had once decorated an archway in my New York apartment grew into a dozen and were strung along the mantle in our new den in Connecticut. When they multiplied further, becoming too numerous for that spot, I decided it was time the bells took pride of place on a Christmas tree all their own. That’s where Lillian Vernon’s catalog came to the rescue, providing a metal three-tiered tree that was the perfect size and heft for the collection. Then, quite by chance, foraging among the antiques stores in my neighborhood, a favorite pastime, I discovered dozens of crystal droplets that once graced a handsome chandelier in a stately manor. Divorced from the branches of a shimmering light fixture, they lay somewhat sadly in a box until I held them up to the sun and let light work its magic on the finely ground facets. How fabulous these would look, I thought, hanging from my Bell Tree. And that’s where you will find them this year, lending their elegant touch and sudden, unexpected shafts of light each time they twirl around and catch the blaze from the flames in our roaring fireplace. This tree has newly come to be christened the Crystal Tree, not to be confused with the eight foot tall “Official Tree” that dominates our family room each year.

Lest you believe that my creation of new traditions were all as superficial or store-bought, I hasten to assure you that I have a bunch of other cherished practices that I initiated through the years. There is the annual caroling party, for instance, that we host at our home, early in December, a jolly Pot Luck Parade where the table is groaning with generous offerings and the rafters echo with the boom of joyous voices. I make dozens of boozy chocolate truffles each year and indulge in Cookie Exchanges with my group of industrious American friends when I leave the house with four dozen home-baked treats and return with an assortment of goodies procured through their baking talents. We no longer attend Midnight Mass in Connecticut where the sub-zero temperatures make such moves near-impossible. We do what our Italian neighbors do, instead, and hear the 8 pm. mass on Christmas Eve. While they return home to their thirteen course fish dinners, we toast the birth of Christ at home, as a family, with a glass of wine and a fruity slice of cake. On Christmas morning, after a hearty brunch, we open presents and immortalize the moments with many photographs. And we herald in the New Year with an Open House where neighbors and friends gather to toast each other’s health with sparkling champagne.

While all of these new traditions that I have so carefully nurtured in our home and family excite and thrill the others, none of them rivals my joy in my Crystal Tree. This is essentially a solitary tradition, I realize, not something I share with anyone else. The silver bells on the tree and the enchanting crystal drops are admired for their beauty, of course, by my immediate family members and guests alike who arrive from near and far. But only we, as a family, know the poignant significance of all those bells. Only we cherish the memories associated with each one, of the years and their passing, accumulated silently, but steadily, by those tiny tinkling, silver record-keepers.