Downton Christmas Countdown!

Dec 5th: The Broken Ornament.

Cora was crying again. Robert had walked in on her sobbing that afternoon. Her hands were cut, and bleeding. There were shards of ceramics and porcelain around her.

"Cora darling, are you all right?" He asked, worried.

"No." She said softly, through her tears.

"What's the matter? Oh! Cora, what's happened to your hands?"

"I- the ornament broke." She said, sobbing quietly.

He looked at the ornament, and somehow it looked familiar. "Darling, why isn't it on the tree?"

"I couldn't bear to p-put it up, not this year." She said, looking at the blood on her hands.

He took a closer look at the ornament, and realized that it was the one that he had presented to his wife on Sybil's first Christmas. It had her name on it, and the date of her birth. He couldn't believe it, how had the ornament made it's way out of the case? They'd taken all of Sybil's things and put them away months ago, but he hadn't thought to look in the Christmas decorations. He remembered his darling baby girl, his laughing, cheerful, Sybil.

"Robert, how are we ever going to take care of Tom?" asked Cora gently.

"I don't know." he answered. Then he remembered how he'd had an ornament made for baby Sybbie, but he had left it wrapped in its box, alone. He hadn't bothered to take it out of its case. He didn't want to remind his wife of the tradition, not after the death of Sybil.

The tradition in the Crawley family was that every time a baby was born, an ornament would be made for the baby's first Christmas, and would hang on the Crawley tree for all of the generations to come. Robert had his own ornament, faded and tarnished, that still hung on the tree every year. Every one of his daughters had one, and he had one made for baby Sybbie. But now, as he looked at the blood on his wife's hands, he couldn't help but wonder.....

Why was his life as broken as his dead daughter's ornament?