HYDE PARK — Amy Engstrom Clugg said she found a strange power in the Russian holiday traditions of her two adopted children while decorating a Christmas tree at the Museum of Science and Industry.
Clugg and her two adopted children from Russia, John and Katy, have decorated the Russian tree for the annual “Christmas Around the World” exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry for the last 14 years.
The three were at the museum on Thursday to participate in the 73rd annual lighting of the giant Christmas tree in the main rotunda of the museum.
Clugg said in 2006, her family tested the power of a Russian tradition, hiding a secret Christmas wish inside a painted wooden ornament.
“We lost our cat on Thanksgiving, she got out during the meal and she was not an outdoor cat,” Clugg said.
That year when Katy was decorating the tree at the museum at 5700 South Lake Shore Drive, she slipped a note into one of the ornaments wishing for Twinkle’s return.
“The next year, we came back to decorate the tree and Katy opens the ball and starts crying,” Clugg said. “Twinkle had been gone for 50 weeks.”
She said after they finished hanging the nesting matoryshka dolls and ornaments crafted by children still back in the orphanage in Russia, they went home and checked a message on the answering machine.
The message: Twinkle had been found. Nearly a year after having gone missing, the cat had been discovered by animal control workers near their home in Elmhurst.
Clugg, who is not Russian herself, said she thought the wish in the ornament did its work as Katy and John nodded their agreement.
“So we have them on our tree at home now, too,” Clugg said.
She said they have tried to include on the tree at the museum a lot of traditional characters from the Dec. 25 holiday for Catholics and Jan. 7 holiday for Orthodox Christians in Russia and their own celebration.
“The way we celebrate in our home is a very secular way with Father Frost bringing gifts and Snegurochka, or the Snow Maiden, sometimes helping him,” Clugg said.
John, now 15, said the holiday in Russia, unlike America, also includes a dark counterpart to the bearded Father Frost.
“If you’re good, you get gifts,” John said. “If you’re bad in Russia, Baba Yaga comes to your house and eats you.”
He pointed up to an ornament with a bearded man in a long blue cloak next to a haggard woman sitting in a mortar and holding a pestle, which she uses to fly around the forests in the fables.
John’s grandmother, who was hovering nearby, said Baba Yaga has never visited their house with a wink.
Clugg said they still hang the wishing ornaments every year on the tree at the museum, but have not added new wishes, instead saving it for dire moments when they are searching for hope.
She said some of the ornaments do still hold secret wishes sent by children at the orphanage in the Ural Mountains in Russia, but she won’t open them and doesn’t know if they ever came true.
The museum, which is normally open from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., will extend its hours to view the trees on Saturdays and Sundays in November and December to 5:30 p.m. The extended hours will also be in effect Dec. 20-30.
The museum will keep normal hours on Christmas Eve will be closed on Thanksgiving and Christmas.
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