See The Forest For The Trees

Back in 1988, I had a job at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. I was living in Manhattan, with my then boyfriend/now husband, and more often than not, I commuted back and forth to Brooklyn by car, because the BAM staff could park as cheaply as subway fare and my car lived on the street and was going to have to be moved for alternate side of the street parking anyway. And then there were those late nights when, in 1988, one did not want to take the subway home alone anyway, and cabs were expensive (but cheaper if you made the driver go over the Manhattan Bridge and up First Avenue, please, which they never wanted to do because the other way was both faster and longer and therefore more lucrative).

One of the productions in 1988 NEXT WAVE FESTIVAL was a Robert Wilson/David Byrne shebang called The Forest - which was apparently based on the Epic of Gilgamesh but I can't remember a thing about it, although somewhere at home I have a hard bound program complete with a synopsis and photos and essays and (I think) a CD of some of the music. It matters not that I can't remember the show. What I remember very clearly is that the opening night performance was followed by a party on the Opera House stage.

The decor for the opening night was butt simple. It was December and Christmas trees had sprouted on every street corner in the city. Someone bought 25 big, skinny, fat, little Christmas trees, a stagehand nailed two pieces of 2x4 to the bottoms, and lo, a forest grew on the stage. We danced, we drank, we gloried in the performance. And at 2 in the morning, intrepid souls shouldered trees and took them home, the ultimate centerpiece.

I drove a little white Ford Fiesta then, a tiny hatchback. Someone helped me get my tree into the car - into, not on top - and I drove home from Brooklyn to Manhattan, perhaps less sober than I should have been. Happily, I found a parking space right near my apartment, and I muscled the tree out of the car, into the building, up the elevator, and into my apartment. My then boyfriend/now husband was duly startled when he stumbled out of bed the next morning and found a Christmas tree in the kitchen.

Origami tree at the American Museum of Natural History

Nowadays, we drive to the tree sale at the church in the next town, and tip the kid who helps tie the tree to the roof of the car. But somehow, the tree that stood on the opera house stage holds a sweet spot in my heart.

Merry Christmas!

May your stockings be filled with your heart's desires, and your table be surrounded by love.

"Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night!"

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care…

It started with three stockings. One for my mother, one for my father, one for me. Mine was white, with an angel in a blue dress. Yellow yarn hair, a gold halo, stars at her feet, organdy wings. My mother’s was white too, an assortment of pastel ornaments appliqued on. My father’s was red; his was the Christmas tree, complete with tiny real glass ornaments, the size of a marble. She’d made them all, my mother did. Crafted of love and felt, they had stars and paillettes sewn on with tiny glass beads at the center, bits of lace and ribbon, an occasional jingle bell.

When my brother was born, she made him a stocking: red felt with a snowman. The snowman was gently padded underneath, and he wore a miniature hand knit blue and white Yale scarf. My sister completed the family, and her stocking was green with a red dressed Santa, fat belly encircled by a tiny vinyl belt.

For years, those five stockings were the ones carefully hung from the mantel each year. One year, I made a tiny inept stocking for a cat, blanket stitched ‘round the perimeter; when my parents divorced, the Christmas tree stocking was put away, not to be spoken of.

Gradually, more stockings were added to the mix – one for my husband, that I made, patchworked from old silk ties. My mother made stockings for my sister’s husband, her two older children, my daughter, my brother’s husband WIFE. We ran out of cup hooks on the mantel and started doubling up. My mother made a stocking for my sister’s youngest child – but didn't realize it was backwards, its toe pointing southwest, until she brought it down to the dining room where it hung in merry opposition to each and every other stocking. A couple of store bought stockings could be rotated in for house guests, like David, our brother from another planet, who came for Christmas Eve one year, and left two days later (and came back every year thereafter).

There were rules about the stockings: nothing was to be put into them until Christmas morning, nothing too heavy, contents were to be gently dumped onto the table and stockings returned immediately to their cuphooks, there must be no handling of the felt with sticky fingers. But, you see, they were worthy of rules, needing of protection. They're art, you see, art shot through with love and magic.

After we’d moved into our house, with our very own mantel, we had stand-in stockings – attractive enough Hable stockings I’d bought on sale – because the “real” stockings still resided at my mother’s house. It was only this year that I brought home the angel, and the ties, and the stars, and hung them with care on our very own cup hooks.



Now, our house is really a home.

Wrapping

My mother loved doing Christmas. Her Christmas was an exuberant but tasteful echt-Victorian tree and ornaments and swags and lights and candles and ribbons and cookies and stockings hung by the chimney with care. She was an expert wrapper, with a deep frugal streak – wrapping paper was carefully recycled (really, you’d never have known), ribbons were put away for use another year, and tags were sorted by name, a shoebox per child. She made the tags, of ends of ribbon, bits cut from Christmas cards, a mylar floof, a flocked holly leaf. Sometimes, even, the tags stayed attached to frilly gold elastic “ribbons”, to be slipped around just the right sized package the next year.

I have a box of her tags. A gold gift box from Lord & Taylor, from the days when department stores put scarves and blouses in real boxes, it’s a jumble of tags, new and old. Some have been around since I was a child (or so it seems). Others are more recent; there are tags that my mother made for my husband and daughter.

My wrapping tends to the more pedestrian. I hate the waste of buying paper, preferring to salvage crinkly brown paper and newsprint and ivory tissue and even a seed catalog with an old-fashioned feel. And I’ve given up on ribbons, in favor of Japanese masking tape, patterns of red and green – loving its duality as both decoration and adhesive.

[A digression: Santa doesn’t use kraft paper and fancy tape. Santa uses real wrapping paper and bows. But, Santa is only responsible for the presents for the one eight year old girl. It is a line in the sand, as it were.]

A couple of weeks ago, I read a book review of a book I just had to have. I mean, I was drooling over the excerpt I downloaded to my Kindle (well, the Kindle app on my iPad if you want to split hairs), but it was the kind of book that I wanted to have and to hold, to dog-ear and splatter-stain. So in a little fit of I-deserve-this, I bought it for myself for Christmas. I figured I’d wrap it up and stuff it under the Christmas tree, to me, love me.

Last night was wrapping night. I sequestered myself in the cellar and set to work. Wrap, wrap, wrap. Check it off the list. Put it in the box. Wrap, wrap, wrap some more. I came to the book I’d bought myself. I wrapped it in Santa paper. My eye fell on the gold box of my mother’s tags. Half wistfully, half mischievously, I fished out a tag and snapped it round the book. Done.

It is truly one of the most peculiar things I’ve ever done, and yet, it was just right. I can’t wait to open it.

Pa Rum Puh Pum Pum

Y'all know that I have a lot of Christmas music, right? As of this morning, there are 1445 tracks tagged holiday in my iTunes library, representing 3.2 DAYS worth of non-stop merriment. A small handful of those might more properly be called New Year's music or Hanukah music; I just call it all Christmas music and be done with it. I'm (small-c) catholic that way. Or maybe just (capital-a) Atheist.

Of those 1445 tracks, 24 of them are versions of The Little Drummer Boy. I know. Pah tum puh pum pum.

I was tickled to discover recently that someone had devised a Little Drummer Boy game, the general premise being that

The LDB Game is a social game wherein you lose when you realize that you've heard any version of the Little Drummer Boy song.

Let me tell you that I lose over and over again, because despite the fact that The Little Drummer Boy represents less than 2% of the tracks in that Christmas playlist, it seems to be in rotation all the pa rum puh pum time.

However, our Christmas lights do not flash in time to the pa rum puh pum pum.



You're welcome.

The Santa Question

A couple of years ago, we got the girl a dollhouse for Christmas. She hardly ever plays with it, because it's too big for the Calico Critters and too small for the Barbies - creative make-believe be damned. Yet, when I asked her if we should get rid of it - it does take up a lot of space in her small bedroom - she told me that she didn't want to because she didn't want to hurt Santa's feelings.

I filed that away.

She's been writing letters to Santa Claus since September, one all Calico Critters and accoutrements, the next a list of American Girl Dolls and accessories. The current envelope addressed to Santa includes a lot of slips of paper cut from the myriad advertising supplements that arrived with the Sunday paper.

But I've been waiting.

The other day, she asked me, carefully, nonchalantly, do you think Santa is real?

I parried with a what do you think?

I asked her to reflect on what happens at the end of The Polar Express (which we'd read the night before).

At one time, most of my friends could hear the bell, but as years passed, it fell silent for all of them. Even Sarah found one Christmas that she could no longer hear its sweet sound. Though I’ve grown old, the bell still rings for me as if does for all who truly believe.

I reminded her about the court scene in Miracle on 34th Street:

Your Honor, every one of these letters is addressed to Santa Claus. The Post Office has delivered them. Therefore the Post Office Department, a branch of the Federal Governent, recognizes this man Kris Kringle to be the one and only Santa Claus.

Today, she still believes in Santa Claus.

But I know that there's doubt in her young heart, and that rather makes me sad.

Merry Christmas!

Visions of Sugarplums

Twas the night before Christmas,
And all through the house
Lots of creatures were stirring,



and Barbie was riding round and round under the tree, perched regally in her flatbed car, without pants.

A Peal for Peel with Appeal

In the event that someone gives you a box of grapefruit for Christmas, think about saving the rinds. Candied grapefruit rind, or peel, is easy to make, and kind of wonderful. It's like turning a sow's ear into a silk purse, trash to treasure.

I had some supermarket grapefruits earlier in the month - after I'd eaten a half for breakfast, I tucked the shell into the fridge in a plastic bag. Once I had four halves, I was ready to go. Basically, you boil the quartered rinds in plain water, twice, to reduce the bitterness and soften up the peel. Then you boil them again in a simple syrup (half sugar, half water). Finally, you cut the quarters into strips, let them dry overnight, and toss them in sugar. I use the recipe from The Inn at Little Washington Cookbook, though I tend to cut my strips fatter than 1/8" - mine end up more like grapefruit gumdrop batons (thinner strips would be drier and chewier). Also, I find they work better if you cut the strips before drying them overnight.



If you're energetic, and in need of little house presents for all the holiday parties you're traipsing off to, you bag them up and hand them out.



If you're really energetic, you can dip them in chocolate, but I prefer my fruit straight up.

And if you're a little bit crazy, you save the excess sugar that you tossed the peel in because you hate to waste it and you use it in shortbread.

Happy cooking!

Wordless Wednesday: Angel

(10 points if you can identify the location.)

Make Glad the Heart of Childhood

We drove into the city yesterday, to take two seven year olds to see Stomp. Somehow, even though it's been playing in the same place for sixteen years (!), we grown-ups had never seen it either. It was a whole lot of fun - good-natured, energetic, boisterous, witty and playful - and it was kind of perfect for a Sunday afternoon. Besides, someone tap dances on bubble wrap - don't you always do that? I was tap dancing on bubble wrap as I worked my way through the presents I was wrapping the other day; it was all over the cellar floor.

On the way into town, I had the iPod with all-Christmas-all-the-time going, because you know, it's almost Christmas. At one point, Mir asked me to put on Santa Baby. Her friend said "what's that?", to which Mir replied "it's a song by Catwoman". Child has her cultural references down pat. Later on, she confided to her friend "the woman in the song thinks Santa is her rich boyfriend". I love eavesdropping on those backseat conversations, though this one devolved into "Santa Claus doesn't exist" - "yes, he does" - "no, he doesn't". Eventually I told them that they'd have to agree to disagree. I don't know if they got that, but they did move on from the Santa discussion.

I've wrapped all of the presents, except those from Santa (one of which I still have to buy). We laid in special paper for the Santa presents - but I've been wobbling about whether Daddy/Husband's presents should be in Santa paper or not. I mean, we'll go to bed on Christmas Eve with a few stray presents under the tree, so everything that'll be there the next morning will be from Santa, right? I think I just answered my own question.

Yes, dears, there is a Santa Claus.

Tinsel

My mother did Christmas right. The house was decorated just so, a garland at the door, swags over the fireplaces, the golden rope across a mirror. A little tree stood in the dining room window, the big tree, always a balsam fir, held court in the corner of the living room. Red votives marched along the mantle, red ribbons bedecked the chandelier. Tinsel wasn't allowed. Wrapping paper and ribbons had to be red, white, green, silver or gold. With a few exceptions, the only ornaments on the trees were antique glass balls.

Every year, I'd ask if I could decorate my room - "a little tree, just for me? a wreath?". No. Christmas stayed downstairs.

I bought a tinsel tree some years ago - I can't remember if it was before or after the child was born, or where we were living at the time. But, it was on sale dirt cheap at ABC Carpet (where nothing is ever less than expensive, much less $13 for a four foot high tree) and it had a certain kitschy charm. I carried it home on the train, shedding bits of gold tinsel with every jostle.

My husband hates it; its shedding puts it in the category of "fucking glitter". My mother hated it; it was far too déclassé. It makes me perversely happy, and my daughter loves it with the passion you'd expect of a seven year old girl.



Last year, we let her have it in her room. I gave her a shoebox of ornaments to call her own - ones she's made, some weird old plastic bells, a Mexican tin heart, the fabric angel her uncle gave her the year she was born, a ceramic chef - found an orphan string of lights, and let her go to town. It's her tree now.

Because some Christmas traditions are made to be broken.

Wordful Christmas Cookies for Wednesday

Hiding in the back pantry at the party the other night, so as not to offend the sensibilities of those who might be offended, were some Christmas cookies that my sister-in-law made.  (Avert your eyes if you're liable to be offended.)



Happily, an upstanding young man for whom I babysat a long time ago took some lovely pictures. We're hoping his mother hasn't seen them.  The pictures, that is. We know she didn't see the cookies.

Eccentric Eclectic Xmas List

Since *everyone* does a holiday round-up about now, I figured I'd get in on the act with a list of some things that people I know might be getting for Christmas:

1) Wandering around Portland last weekend, we stopped into a shop selling flavored balsamic vinegar. It is oddly delicious, and I imagine that the espresso balsamic drizzled over a pork chop will be divine.

2) The girl child got an American Girl doll for her birthday, but it only came with the clothes on its back. Instead of spending an arm and a leg on actual American Girl pajamas, I found some on Etsy - they're cute, they were cheap, and the money goes to a person instead of to Mattel. There are lots of people selling doll clothes on Etsy - just search for 18" doll clothes if you need some.

3) My very wonderful friend Very Mary makes very charming necklaces, personalized to order. She wraps them beautifully, and her handwriting on the package is just splendid.

4) I've been eyeing Happy Tape forever; I finally bought some to wrap with and some to give away.

5) Somehow, we ended up with two copies of The Magic Pudding because I'd bought one and squirreled it away a long time ago, and then my sister-in-law gave a copy to my daughter for her birthday last month. So the original copy is now destined for another child - that's not re-gifting, is it? Incidentally, if you don't know about the New York Review Children’s Collection, you might want to buy one of each.

6) I had a credit for a dozen free note cards at Shutterfly, so I had some printed using an image from my decay blog.

7) As soon as I saw the solar queen, I knew I needed one. Her purse is a solar cell! She waves in the sunlight!

8) It is impossible to buy anything for my father; he has everything. So, instead, I'm adopting him a golden eagle through the Delaware Valley Raptor Center. I could adopt a bald eagle instead, but the golden is BIGGER!

What's on your list?

Christmas Comes Earlier Every Year

Even though it isn't even Halloween yet, I confess that I've been thinking about Christmas cards, because it's a tricky thing, getting the Christmas card picture just right. I definitely tend towards the offbeat; last year's card had the kid riding a tractor and when she was two, she was throttling Elmo. Let's put it this way: I'm never going to be (read more)

Trading

One of my 4 and a half year old nephew’s Christmas presents was a switchblade comb – wildly inappropriate, thoroughly amusing. He ran around the house whipping it open and menacing folks, having a grand old time.

Some while later, I caught my six year old daughter attempting to trade him a gold drawstring bag of Hanukah gelt AND a pirate charm for the switchblade. I put a stop to it – thinking it’s kind of unseemly to trade out your Christmas presents on the very day on which you receive them – not to mention the fact that I really didn’t need to have a switchblade living under our roof.

Later, when I asked her about it – amused, mind you, not rattled or horrified – she explained that “Tiny didn’t want to trade because he already had a bag of gelt”. Okay then.

There’s some moral in here about capitalism and big bags of money and giving the people what they want, but I can’t figure it out.

O Tannenbaum

Tomorrow I have to go back to work. It's been a nice week and a half off - with Christmas celebrations that began on the 24th, and finished today. There was champagne, and good cheese, and excellent beef, not to mention raised waffles and candy cane crisps. Oh, and bagels and wine and clementines and pistachios.

Our tree is still up, though most of the presents have found their places around the house. And I hate taking down the tree. It takes so long, and it sucks all the glitter out of the air. And then there are needles to vacuum up, and boxes to carry down, and the tree itself to be dragged, unceremoniously, to the curb.

If I were brave and had a back forty and some explosives, I'd rocket launch the tree instead.

After all, a Christmas tree deserves a good send off as reward for filling our hearts with gaiety, no?

The Christmas Cards

When the girl was two, we sent a picture of her in shades, holding a life-sized Elmo in a death grip.

When she was three, we sent a picture of her naked on the beach, coyly looking over her shoulder.

When she was four, she was in an undershirt and a crown, with a devilish expression on her face.

And this year - the seventh Christmas card since she was born - she's riding a tractor.



We're all about the untraditional card.

Happy Christmas and a Merry New Year to you and yours.


(PS - to forestall the anticipated question, zero, one and five were lovely photo cards of our dear child, but in a much more traditional vein.)

Brown Paper Packages Tied Up With String

Ribbon, yarn, string. Tissue, kraft paper. Cardstock. Old paper patterns.

Armed with a paper cutter, scissors, whimsy and a hot glue gun, I wrapped every single present this year without buying any supplies - and they all had a thematic coherency.

The wrapping was beige, brown, ecru, taupe, cream, buff, tan, and khaki - a neutral palette of saved sheets underlaying the recycled red, green, gold, silver and white ribbons. For the tags, I typed everyone's name enough times into columns in 36 point type, picked a random handful of nice display fonts, and printed out sheets of buff cardstock. A pass through the paper cutter and the hole punch, with a little piece of red crochet thread - bang zoom, tags.



One set of (mailed) packages had non-standard orange and brown ribbons, only because I know that family of recipients not to care that Christmas is Red and Green. The family's set of presents was, however, internally consistent and complementary.

And Santa? Santa wrapped in red/green/white/silver/gold wrapping paper, paper that we already had, or that had been carefully saved last year; the packages that will mysteriously appear overnight will be in magical colorful paper, not the buff/brown/ecru that the human parents used.

Ribbons can be reused over and over. And why spend money on wrapping paper? It's just going to be torn off. It's about the giving, not the wrapping.

Excitement

The child spent yesterday afternoon at her grandparents' house. While there, she helped make Christmas cookies, and brought home a little ornament that her grandmother gave her. When we got home, she asked to go down to the cellar "to wrap something". She insisted. I escorted her down to the cellar, she glommed onto some scrap red taffeta and wrapped up the ... little ornament that her grandmother had just given her. "I need a ribbon" so I found her a piece of green ribbon - "red and green, it's the Christmas colors!" - and she made a label out of paper and affixed it with enough tape to fix the space shuttle. Then she put it under the tree.

I thought that was the end of things, until Friday anyway.

We sat down to do her homework: fill in some blanks, do a word search, read a book (her out loud to me), read another book (me out loud to her), write a sentence about the second book*.

And then she asked "Can I open a present?" At this point, the only presents under the tree are two that came by mail, one that she brought home from school, one that she wrapped using fabric and a needle & thread (and I have no idea what's in it, except that she told me it's edible, and I hope that means it isn't perishable because it's been there for days) and the two that we bought and wrapped for Daddy before the snowfall on Saturday. In other words, hardly anything, and she knows that no presents are to be opened until Christmas.

Indulgent and perspicacious mama that I am, I said yes, and she proceeded to open the present from Grandma that she herself had wrapped an hour before. We said "Ooh what a beautiful ornament", and she went to bed clutching it in its box.

Her excitement about Christmas this year is palpable - so much more so than ever before. It's rather magical.

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* "What was interesting was that the egg didn't go back in the book", in case you wanted to know.