Origami Angel

Origami Angel
WC 293

Grandma gave us the most wonderful Christmas ornament, an angel. But not just any angel. It was an origami angel she had acquired while a missionary in Japan.

Hansatu was Japanese paper money from the 1600s. Somehow Grandma had acquired some of that ancient money. Then she had taken it from the country in the form of Christmas ornaments.

I asked Grandma about that one year. Her answer was “Most people in Japan practice Shintoism. I spent five years there trying to evangelize the people. They didn’t want to hear about Christ, even though I tried. I wanted to bring back some ancient money as a souvenir. So, I thought, why not? My friend Onishi Minori was an origami master. He could fold paper into any design imaginable. They had no concept of angels, but I love angels. So the pieces of Hansatsu I had became origami angels. It was like magic” She smiled her inscrutable smile and sat back in her favorite chair. “When I left Japan that year, all the origami angels sat in my suitcase. Immigration looked at them and instantly passed them over. I brought home ten of the beauties. You have one. The others were passed along to other family members.”

But this year, as we put the ornaments on the tree, the angel was missing. I can’t find it anywhere. It was always the first one on the tree. This year we searched everywhere, but no luck. Julie and I finally decided it was hopeless. The Christmas tree went up without the wonderful angel, but it seemed incomplete.

We left cookies for Santa, as usual. Janie got up Christmas morning and yelled for us to come quick. On Santa’s plate laid Grandma’s origami angel made from Hansatu.