Patti Brunner Collins pulled out the ornament while her family was putting up the Christmas tree, not long ago. While it is made of simple cardboard and cotton, it is as precious as any Yuletide heirloom in Western New York.
Collins stores it carefully each year, protected and cushioned inside a Ziploc bag. The ornament portrays a handmade Santa Claus, created about 45 years ago in a first grade classroom at SS Peter & Paul School in Hamburg â the kind of project on which an intent little kid with paste, scissors and cotton, bent forward at her desk, clearly spent some time.