{"id":37393,"date":"2025-12-18T16:35:56","date_gmt":"2025-12-18T21:35:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=37393"},"modified":"2025-12-18T16:36:04","modified_gmt":"2025-12-18T21:36:04","slug":"broken-cherished-ornament-sends-auroran-on-secret-mission","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/broken-cherished-ornament-sends-auroran-on-secret-mission\/","title":{"rendered":"Broken cherished ornament sends Auroran on \u201cSecret Mission\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Catherine Rossi believes in getting a head-start on her holiday preparation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Each year, she sets an end-of-November timeline for her and her family to get their Christmas tree up and ready, and last year was no exception \u2013 to a degree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As she and her husband were just about to finish trimming their evergreen with one special ornament set to take pride of place, fate had other ideas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLast Christmas was a very busy time for us. We had a new grandchild who was born November 1, so we were busy and stressed, then we both got COVID for the first time after avoiding it for all those years, and it took a lot of effort [to decorate the tree] when we were both feeling not-so-great,\u201d Rossi explains. \u201cWe struggled through and we got up, and the last ornament to go on the tree is a really treasured one my parents gave to us the first year we were married.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s always the last one to go up, and I carefully unwrapped it from the bubble wrap in the box and, as I headed towards the tree with the little gold filament of thread you hang it on the tree with, somehow, as I was just about there, my finger missed it and it smashed to the floor.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ornament that had meant so much to her was in pieces and her husband helped sweep it up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was so incredibly sad for me, personally, because I just lost my dad a few years before that and it was a reminder of all the Christmases past,\u201d says Rossi, who thought her husband threw all he\u2019d swept up into the trash.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But that wasn\u2019t the end of the story as Rossi relates in \u201cSecret Mission,\u201d one of 101 stories in the new book Chicken Soup for the Soul: The Spirit of Christmas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chicken Soup for the Soul: The Spirit of Christmas is billed as a book \u201ccelebrating all the joy, gratitude, and humour of the entire holiday season, from Thanksgiving to Hanukkah, to New Year\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is the second story Rossi has had published as part of the popular Chicken Soup for the Soul book series in 12 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a story of perseverance because it\u2019s taken me 12 years to get another story published,\u201d says Rossi with a chuckle. \u201cIt\u2019s not as easy as people might think it is. They get between 5,000 and 10,000 submissions for every title they\u2019re going to publish and they do somewhere between eight and 12 books a year.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When asked what made \u201cSecret Mission\u201d click with editors, Rossi says it\u2019s reminiscent of O. Henry\u2019s Gift of the Magi, a perennial favourite during the holiday season. She was \u201cthrilled\u201d it was selected to be a part of this year\u2019s volume.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI knew it was a good story \u2013 I don\u2019t really know what the difference is in what they pick, because I feel that all my stories resonate with a lot of people, and I was relieved after all those years of trying,\u201d she says. \u201cI was really on the verge of saying, \u2018You know what? I\u2019m done. I\u2019m not going to submit anymore.\u2019 All of the stories that get submitted to Chicken Soup have to be true-life stories, and it\u2019s just your everyday family life. I\u2019m a big believer in looking for signs the universe gives us and I really hone in on those feelings. You just know when a moment is really special and it gives you that catalyst, that spark, to write.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Speaking to The Auroran at the start of the week, Rossi says most members of her family have not yet read \u201cSecret Mission,\u201d but one reader so far has been her 92-year-old mother, who gave her the ornament at the heart of the story in the first place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cShe was absolutely thrilled [and] it\u2019s a really nostalgic moment for the family, and it\u2019s bittersweet for me knowing that my dad\u2019s not here anymore with us,\u201d she says. \u201cThe whole book contains 101 stories and mine is just one of those 101, but I sat down and read the book cover to cover \u2013 I kind of used it as an advent calendar this year reading a few stories every day \u2013 and some of them made me smile, some of them made me laugh, and some of them I definitely had tear in my eyes when I read them. It\u2019s the human experience and the holidays are a special time of year.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir
Editor
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter<\/strong><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Catherine Rossi believes in getting a head-start on her holiday preparation. Each year, she sets an end-of-November timeline for her and her family to get their Christmas tree up and ready, and last year was no exception \u2013 to a degree. As she and her husband were just about to finish trimming their evergreen with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":37394,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/2025-12-18-05.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-9J7","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-03 08:42:06","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37393"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37393\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37395,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37393\/revisions\/37395"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}