(This is a re-post from the past, but this year I've already got my four trees --described below-- up at home in Massachusetts, thanks entirely to the patience, talents and assistance of family members. Right now, I'm in Manhattan, about to take the subway with daughter Eleni and granddaughter Amalia to Rockefeller Center to see the ultimate Christmas tree... then the Radio City Christmas show. Can't wait! As to the annual Christmas card and letter--I haven't even started!)
Right now I should be addressing Christmas cards but I'm in the grip of my seasonal craziness which involves decorating...lots...of...trees.
I also decorate doors and chandeliers and kitchen shelves and the grand piano and of course the mantel piece, but what I do most is trees. Each with a theme. In every room. Well, not EVERY room because my husband has started to crack down on that--especially in his office, despite the lovely all white (sprayed snow and icicles and pine cones) tree I did one year. It shed.
I think this is a genetic thing inherited from my mother. At Christmas time she decorated so much that you couldn't find a flat surface available to set down your cup of eggnog.
So far I've only put up, um, four. And I'm going to show them to you now.
On the day after Thanksgiving came the Real Tree, which goes in the living room. I realize that's much too early and it will soon be very dry, but daughter Eleni and her brand new husband Emilio, with some other elves, insisted on dragging it home and putting on the lights as soon as the turkey was digested and the cranberry sauce was gone. I usually pick a color scheme, and this year went with silver and white, with the only color coming from some crazy peacock ornaments I got from Pier One (which has great ornaments! Have you seen the under-the-sea collection? Squid and fish and lobsters and crayfish and mermaids. Now there's a theme I haven't tried.)
With the peacocks, I also used lots of white butterflies (from the Dollar Store) and white birds and angel wings, so I guess the theme of the wonderful-smelling Real Tree this year would be wings.
In the dining room I always put a wire tree to show off my antique ornaments. And I put a wire from the tree to the window latch so that it (hopefully) can't get knocked over. You can see that we don't have snow yet in Massachusetts, unlike Minnesota, but we will soon.
Some of these ornaments are reproductions, but most are the real thing. My grandmother had a whole tree decorated with blown-glass birds with those spun glass tails and often a metal clip to hold it on the tree. I still have a few of hers. I really love the fragile teapots once sold at every Woolworth's for pennies. They cost a lot more now. The blown-glass ornaments usually say "West Germany" on the metal cap. The glass ornaments that were once screw-in lights were made in Japan between 1930 and 1950 and are a lot less likely to break.
I also decorate doors and chandeliers and kitchen shelves and the grand piano and of course the mantel piece, but what I do most is trees. Each with a theme. In every room. Well, not EVERY room because my husband has started to crack down on that--especially in his office, despite the lovely all white (sprayed snow and icicles and pine cones) tree I did one year. It shed.
I think this is a genetic thing inherited from my mother. At Christmas time she decorated so much that you couldn't find a flat surface available to set down your cup of eggnog.
So far I've only put up, um, four. And I'm going to show them to you now.
With the peacocks, I also used lots of white butterflies (from the Dollar Store) and white birds and angel wings, so I guess the theme of the wonderful-smelling Real Tree this year would be wings.
In the dining room I always put a wire tree to show off my antique ornaments. And I put a wire from the tree to the window latch so that it (hopefully) can't get knocked over. You can see that we don't have snow yet in Massachusetts, unlike Minnesota, but we will soon.
Some of these ornaments are reproductions, but most are the real thing. My grandmother had a whole tree decorated with blown-glass birds with those spun glass tails and often a metal clip to hold it on the tree. I still have a few of hers. I really love the fragile teapots once sold at every Woolworth's for pennies. They cost a lot more now. The blown-glass ornaments usually say "West Germany" on the metal cap. The glass ornaments that were once screw-in lights were made in Japan between 1930 and 1950 and are a lot less likely to break.
In the library I always put my Shoe Tree, which started when the Metropolitan Museum in New York first started selling ornaments based on shoes in their collections.
This became a kind of mania and now I can't afford to buy the newest ones from the Museum, but I've added lots of cunning real (baby-sized) shoes, and people keep giving me more. My favorites on this tree are the Chinese baby shoes that look like cats and the fur-lined baby moccasins and the tiny Adidas sneakers.
On the porch I've put the Kitchen Tree, or Cookie & Candy Tree. This was inspired by some friends who live in a tiny apartment and decorate their tree only with cookies and candy and pretzels and candy canes. Then, when Christmas is over, they put it all outside for the birds and other New York fauna to enjoy.
As you can see, I've cheated quite a bit--adding ornaments that look like kitchen utensils and non-edible gingerbread men and peppermints. An authentic Kitchen Tree should have chains of real popcorn and cranberries (which we did back when I had children small enough to enjoy stringing them.)
Last year Trader Joe's sold little gingerbread men with holes already punched in their heads so I could string them on the tree, but this year the gingerbread men are frosted but the holes are missing, so I just stabbed them with the wire hooks and it worked fine (and any that broke, I ate, of course. They taste better frosted.)
That's four trees so far and counting--I still haven't started decorating the tree in my studio that holds my stash of ornaments from Mexico and India, but that will come soon, and I haven't shown you my Santa Claus collection and the miniature town in the bay window in the kitchen and the many creches we have from around the world....But let's face it, I have to get back to those Christmas cards.
