A woman who accidentally broke a decades-old Christmas bauble realized there had been something magical hidden away inside it for all those years.
Ashley Gutierrez Siler, 40, lives in Augusta, Georgia, and has gone viral for showcasing what her mother found in one of her Christmas ornaments thrifted long ago.
“She doesn’t know where or when she thrifted it,” Gutierrez Siler told Newsweek. “She’s been collecting vintage ornaments for decades, but it would have been somewhere in Georgia or South Carolina, most likely.”
The old ornament met its end this year, smashing into pieces on the floor as Gutierrez Siler’s mother dropped it while decorating for Christmas—but amid the broken shards were pieces of unexpected festive joy.
On December 10, Gutierrez Siler shared a series of photos to Reddit’s r/FoundPaper via her account u/ashleygee, showcasing what was found in the “time capsule in a Christmas ornament.”
She explained that her mother has been collecting Shiny-Brite ornaments for “four decades,” and inside the smashed ornament, “found a collection of jokes, predictions, and notes from a kid named BJ, all dated from the 60s-70s.
“I just love the idea of a kid coming back to this ornament periodically to add another note to the collection for some random stranger to find nearly 60 years later,” she wrote.
The photos show the tiny pieces of paper, rolled up to fit inside the bauble, with one dated 1971 reading: “Merry Christmas to the future!”
Another, dated 1964, declared: “If you are over 40 you will become happy soon. If you are under 40 you will become sad soon.”
Other scraps of paper were dated 1962, and included jokes about who “keeps putting these notes in Christmas balls.”
Reddit users had a big response, awarding the post more than 3,500 upvotes, as one user called it “SO AWESOME” and joked: “So glad I’m over 40, can’t wait to be happy soon.”
Another pointed out how BJ got his numbers confused on one date, and wrote: “You mean time traveler from 9164.”
“This is pretty awesome,” one user said, as another declared it was “one of the best things I’ve seen on this sub.”
And one suggested: “I wonder if at some point in the past BJ went to add his note and found the box missing, asked his mom about it, and discovered she’d donated them. I bet he’d be tickled they’re still around.”
Gutierrez Siler told Newsweek she hopes “grown-up BJ still has enough wonder and joy in life to think about his jokes and the people who have seen them. Who could have imagined Reddit in the 60s?”
BJ’s hidden notes have even inspired a plan for Guttierez Siler and her daughter to do the same thing with their Christmas ornaments, and multiple Redditors shared that they would be, too.
“I love the reaction—we could all use some joy and magic right now,” she said. “BJ has multiplied holiday joy likely more than he could have ever imagined!”
Americans ofen go all-out for Christmas. While Gutierrez Siler’s mother thrifted her decorations, this year people in the US are predicted to spend an average of $1,007 on holiday gifts, according to a survey from Gallup.
The amount spent on holiday gifts has dipped and risen over time—from $909 in 2007, to between $801to $712 between 2008 and 2011 following the economic crash. Numbers continued to rise until the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, but has been rising steadily again in recent years.
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