THE THROWS OF CHRISTMAS

My dear online friend Kat just said on her blog that she had boxes and decorations and glitter in every room of the house and was in the “throw” of decorating (quotes hers) for Christmas.  

That one brought a smile---for first I thought of her lovely home, always perfection, always beautiful and neat, with all those cardboards and cartons and spills of sparkly stuff---probably the only clutter allowed to grace that well-ordered space all year.

THEN came the remembrance:   My first SIL and the ICICLES!   We used to buy those little flat packs of the thin-thin shredded aluminum/lead foil, to be draped onto the limbs of the tree to represent silvery, quivery shards of ice.   They came in a slim flat box, were thinner than tissue, with a dull gleam, and, since they were probably a foot-and-a-half long and folded in half around a little shirt-cardboard for convenience---they fell apart at a whisper, leaving you with a little mingy half-drape across the limb.

We’d separate carefully, taking them out one at a time---sometimes one person taking out and holding out, and the other gently removing the strand and laying it over the limb.   There were several camps on the decorating front:   Ours had careful one-string placement amongst the green, like this:

photo from jillsbooks

 

There were the ones who believed in decking the limb-tips only; the lavish grab of several, with the centers welded together by the pressure, placed around amongst the ornaments, and the one person I ever saw who loved the forest primeval look, and so grabbed them by the very end and squeezed an inch or so around the branch, so that they trailed down long and smooth.

And then there was SIL’s Method.  She believed in making it “look natural”---as natural as a lead-encrusted evergreen could look, with big handfuls tossed upward toward the tree, so that they fell as nature would have intended, had the skies showered great Pern-clumps of metal strings.

Whatever hit, wherever it hit---that was the intended spot.   And whatever landed on the floor was picked up, gathered into another, messier handful, and given another shot at it.  The whole thing looked like droves of drunken spiders had been spinning droopy, disconnected webs all up and down the tree.  Great bare spots were flanked by big ole crinkly wads of the things, and whole sections dropped their unbalanced little burdens onto the carpet, the tree-skirt, and all the presents below.  

And family lore still has it that you could set the Christmas Day clock by SIL’s front yard---the minute she licked the last scrape of Sweet-Tater Pie off her fork, she’d head home, and in a bit there would be a green mound out by the garbage pickup site, winking silver twinkles in the sunshine before the rest of us could finish the Dinner Dishes.

Did you ever use these?  What was your application method?

And someday----SOMEDAY---when I get to know you better, I’ll tell the story of our very first Christmas here, and the very interesting decorations on the perfectly-good little tree we pulled out of the Dumpster the week before Christmas.

A HAPPY DECEMBER TO EVERYONE!!