Thinking about home and holidays

Do decorations make holidays better?

Homemade wreath

We always had decorations throughout the house leading up to the next holiday: Easter, Christmas, Birthdays, Thanksgiving, and so on. This was in addition to the ever-changing seasonal decor around the house and garden. 

My mom was the one who made a big deal about holidays and celebration events. This was in part due to her job as an editor and writer for the California edition of a national home design magazine. She had access to all the newest products and samples, usually 3-6 months ahead of publication dates This was back in the time of printed magazines only, so Christmas issues were prepared during summertime, for example. I think since she was constantly surrounded by decorating ideas, it was inevitable she would use some of them at home. 

We would have certainly had something like this, although I took this photo in a shop window.

In our house we had the usual seasonally appropriate placemats, table decorations, flower arrangements and mantelpiece decor. But there were also all manner of crazy items used for staging photos that eventually made it into our house too. I particularly remember a pair of giant paper maché hollow half-globes two feet in diameter, covered with yellow and pink polka dots. Apparently they are great for filling with ice to hold popsicles/ice lollies at birthday parties - who knew?   

My mom also made spectacular birthday cakes for a few years, to match the themes of my parties, all of which she selected. One year I had a sunflower themed birthday party (it was summertime), and my dress, the cake, the party favours, the sandwiches, games, and goodness-knows-what-else were all decorated or shaped like yellow sunflowers. I don’t remember it much except there are photos which are now in storage many thousand miles away. That is my excuse for not showing you; bet you are sorry to miss that.

Here is some of my dried lavender instead of birthday sunflowers

One memorable grown-up dinner party she organised was a crab and artichoke feast, including San Francisco sourdough bread. Everyone was given crab-decorated full body-sized bibs to wear, as Dungeness crab can be very messy to eat. It is served with lots of melted butter or mayonnaise for dipping, and there are often flying crab shells during the cracking process, during which everyone is responsible to crack the legs and bodies and then dig their own crab out of the shells. The artichokes were served in the previously mentioned polka dot bowls. The napkins had artichokes on them, obviously. I’m sure there was San Francisco-related music on the record player (yep, this was that long ago, pre-playlists). It got pretty rowdy, as I recall, as the crab extraction process takes time, and the wine was flowing freely.

In counterpoint to all the showiness my mom threw at holidays and parties, my dad quietly did his own thing for holidays, much like everything else in his life. 

I remember one year on the date of my half-birthday, he baked me a half a cake. A two layer cake cut in half, vertically, and frosted. So clever, and completely unexpected.  For the grown-up parties, he would make the special drinks, or pick out a special wine, and was always the photographer, which suited his desire to stay in the background. 

For my birthday parties, he would be the one pushing the swings, or patiently retrieving the tail from the donkey (or the repetitive part of whatever game), and encouraging each kid to give it another go or to hang back with him if they were feeling shy or needing quiet.  

He used to make really clever wooden projects for holidays and birthdays. One year, he built a doll house on top of a spinning base, so you could sit in one place and spin the house around to decorate it, and move the dolls and furniture without having to change places yourself. 

(He was also the one who explained to me when I decided I might like to be an architect, after a particularly exciting decorating session with the doll-house, that I would have to learn about electrical connections and plumbing as well as the design and colours part. I was not happy to have to think about that, and decided maybe I wouldn’t be an architect after all.)

Another year he spent hours cutting out dozens of wooden tree ornaments in various shapes with his jigsaw and drilled hanging holes at the top of each one so my mom and I could paint them and give them to all our friends for Christmas. I’m pretty sure it was my mom who got most of the credit for the ornaments, although to be fair it was probably her idea.

Many years later and I now have my own boxes of seasonal decorations, organised by season, but not nearly as comprehensive as my mother’s collection. I inherited most of her stuff as her dementia took hold, and sadly had to to throw a lot of the decaying collection away. But I did keep a few things, and managed to send three boxes of our combined holiday decor to the UK when we moved here 12 years ago. I’ve now grown the decoration box collection to six, plus a small drawer, and I think that is where we will stay for now.

Over the years, I created some new traditions with my children, and carried a few of the ones from my mom forward too. I haven’t been able to repeat the Dungeness crab and artichoke party since I moved to the UK, which I miss, as my version became a beloved Christmas party tradition for my family and friends. There were some fairly lively crab cracking sessions, plus the wine was always flowing freely.

Very tidy Crab dinner in progress…(note crab shell weapon/cracker in the upper left shadows)

In a couple of days we will celebrate Thanksgiving in a very small way. It is not a holiday in the UK obviously, so we don’t get the day off to cook and invite family and friends around to eat and drink and play games. I miss the boisterous dinners in the U.S. for Thanksgiving where you are always welcome at somebody’s home. Even if you can’t be with your family, you join others in your chosen family. To me that is the point of the holiday really, to be thankful for the people you are with and the bounty of the day. 

So to you all I wish you a moment (or hours if you are lucky) to be thankful for the people around you and the bounty of your day. And if you are really lucky, to be happy at home with both. Tastefully decorated, I hope.

Family decoration