(Too much still to do, too little time, so I'm re-posting this four-year-old essay about my Christmas trees. It still applies--I've got these four trees up --3-year-old Amalia helped decorate the Real Tree in the living room. I keep thinking of new themes for trees but try to squelch that urge. But on the kitchen table I've got a fake gingerbread house surrounded by little woodland creatures made out of twigs and stuff. Not made by me--but purchased at Pier One. As for the Christmas cards, about half or them are in the mail and the other half will be late--as usual.)
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.
