decked on Design Folder!Yes I am. And here's the proof of the Chrissy-mas pudding with a tour of my very own tree. The ornaments have been saved since the 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s... with honest-to-goodness real live lead tinsel. I always look for short-needled trees with strong branches, usually fir, with lots of open space so that ornaments can actually
hang. That allows them to move and brings the tree to life. Because the heavily laden branches tend to sag and look sad, I tuck dried plant material (in this case wild teasels) to give the tree more upward motion. Beneath the boughs I drape a clean white cotton sheet saved for decades for this humble service. Like snow, nothing looks more honest or pure.
The teasels are real, picked by the armload from nearby wetlands. They require a good shaking to remove the hundreds of tiny seeds from the flower heads. I do this as I cut them so they have a chance to replenish, come Spring. The tinsel is real too: made of lead (none of that slippery plastic stuff for me) and saved since the late 60s in unopened packages. Even as a teenager, I knew this stuff was an endangered species. The snowflake in the background is handcarved wood, one of several I bought in the early 70s.
This little angel earned her wings in the late 1940s. They were made of embossed silver foil paper and she wore a gown of white plastic with silver stars printed on it. Both grew tattered and were replaced by the mid-60s. Using her old wings for a pattern, my father cut these out of aluminum, while my sister sewed her a cowl-neck dress. Then in the 80s I fashioned the long overskirt from a piece of handmade lace found in Grandmother Amanda's camelback trunk.
Her halo is original: a clear plastic disk into which a small lightbulb fits, and still gleams. Atop my own tree now, the angel is always accompanied by a silver foil sun and a Hubble snapshot of our beautiful earth.
View On Black
This elegant glass swan was given to me in the mid-1950s. It has a white pearlized body with metalic gold wings, and its tail is of softly spun fiberglass. Back and forth it wobbles on legs made of springs, and a clip (now a bit rusty but still trusty) afixes it to tree branches. I have cherished it from the first moment it was gently laid in my six-year-old hands.
About 60 years old, this celluloid deer has red glass eyes and remnants of glitter covering its coat. On its belly - the remains of a red paper stamp. My parents had a whole set of these guys tramping across their mantle. Although I'd like to say that Santa knocked them off and broke them while sliding down the chimney, the truth is few survived because we thought they were toys and played with them hard. I've got home movies of us doing exactly that, taken by my father with his beloved 8mm movie camera. His movie projector still runs. I must get it out and watch those old screen gems again, along with the early
Kiko the Kangaroo cartoon "Skating on Thin Ice." Such memories.
Rounding out my holiday tour are these three tiny angels that once danced around a red plastic music box. It was given to me when I was about five years old by my Aunt Peg, who brought it all the way home from Germany. Once I got it, it only lasted the ride home in the car - no wait, that was the snowglobe that dropped from my sleepy hands and smashed on the cement driveway. That's the last we saw of that. But this is what is left of the music box - the angels - one without her wings, another without her torch. Charmers, just the same, and dancing still across my bookcase.
