Holiday Treasures

With the holidays fast approaching and our December Ask-A-Wench blog upon us this week, we Wenches asked ourselves: Is there a holiday decoration that you treasure, something you bring out every year, perhaps something that represents family and fond memories or has another special meaning for you? Read on to find out what, for us, adds very special magic to this already magical season -- and scroll down to the comment section to tell us about something special that brightens your holiday!   

Pat:  We’ve been collecting ornaments for decades. We’ve passed on quite a few to the kids and left a few behind when we moved, but our very first ornaments always travel with us. We were extremely poor when we had our first Christmas tree, but we had a new baby and wanted to start our own traditions. So rather than buy fancy cartons of glittery balls we couldn’t afford, we bought ornament kits and made our own. Then we added popcorn strings and cookies that no infant could resist! The plaster ones are losing their glitter and fading with the years, but the wooden ones have really held up. I still like the idea of a homemade holiday, so a few of these go on the tree every year with all the others we’ve collected.

Andrea:  I have a very special memento from childhood Christmases that I take out every year. It’s a little lamb from the vintage family crèche that my Swiss grandmother handed down to my mother. The stable—a lovely little structure built of twigs and thatch—and most of the other figurines are now with my older brother, but my younger brother and I each got to have a piece of family history. The nicks, the wobbles, the threadbare wool of my lamb all make me smile as I think back to those holidays of the past. One in particular really stands out. We would always make a big deal of setting up the creche when grandmother would arrive for Christmas. Out came the box, with all the figurines carefully wrapped in tissue paper from the previous year and we set arranging the shepherds, the animals in the stable, Joseph and Mary . . . and to everyone’s horror we came to the end of unpacking and Baby Jesus was nowhere to be found! Now, had a cow or donkey gone missing, we probably could have overlooked it, but this was BAD! 

My mother could see that my grandmother was a bit rattled. Being artistic, she an Idea. Without telling any of us, she went downstairs to her art studio and found a block of beeswax in her bookbinding supplies. (The human figures were all molded of plaster, wax and cloth.) Taking up an X-acto knife, she set to work and carved a tiny sleeping baby, found a scrap of white silk for swaddling cloth, and returned upstairs, where she carefully laid him in the manger. My grandmother was elated! Christmas could now officially continue! Needless to say, my mother’s handcarved Baby Jesus became part of family legend. (Suspicions had fallen on my younger brother, who was usually to blame when mischief happened. But he swears to this day that he had nothing to do with the disappearance!)

Christina: I have several boxes of Christmas decorations that I bring out every year and most of the things in there are special in some way. What I treasure the most, however, are the Christmas table cloths, runners and doilies, which have all been lovingly made by various members of my family. There’s a table runner made by my grandmother, a magnificent poinsettia cross-stitch by my mother, small doilies given to me by my favourite aunts, one from my daughter, and even a table cloth I made myself. These all took hours of painstaking work and make me feel close to them during the festive season, especially those who are no longer with us.

My absolute favourite is the little doily with camels – they are just adorable! It was sewn by my great-aunt Elly, a spinster lady who basically spent most of her life doing handicrafts. She used to spend Christmas with us, and looking at this item brings back so many wonderful memories of Christmases past. We had huge gatherings with grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins, and it was such fun! I have lots of pieces of Elly’s exquisite work but this tiny little thing appeals to me like nothing else. I have used it every Christmas since I was given it and I will never part with it.
I’m currently working on a replica in different colours, but it won’t be as lovely as the original. Maybe it will remind one of my descendants of me though – who knows?

Anne here. Sadly my vintage family ornaments were stolen from my parents' house some years ago. But I always enjoy the ritual of getting out the boxes containing my own Christmas decorations and arranging them around the house. It's so hard to pick a favourite. But then my iPhone refused to send me the photos I took for this post, so I'm left with old photos, mostly of ornaments I've made myself. I went through a stage of making them out of paper and card, and all of them in this photo are paper, except the holly wreath, which is polyclay. I sometimes make 'dangles' to give to others -- strings of crystals and other beads to hand on a tree and catch the light. And I did a course making ornaments (and earrings) from porcelain.

But like other wenches, the ornaments that are most dear to me have stories and memories attached to them. There's a little bouzouki from a young Greek girl who was sent out to attend school in Australia and improve her English. She was a little bit lost at first and I took her under my wing, and when the year was up, she returned to Greece and sent me a lovely letter and this little bouzouki ornament. There's an unvarnished wooden silhouette ornament from when I was a backpacker in Switzerland in the lead-up to Christmas, and watched a woman in a craft market cutting it by hand with a simple hand-held jigsaw. We got talking and when she'd finished, I bought it. 

Some of my ornaments are from friends, others I made and the rest I bought. I think that's the thing about Christmas ornaments — I'm not a fan of the idea of 'curating' the tree in the latest Christmas style. My tree will always be a mish-mash of styles and materials, and a gorgeous personal collection of memories and stories. 

Mary Jo: The history of this splendid clock is a little vague. It came from my mother who got it from her mother. I'm not sure how it ended up in my house but I think my sister ordered it. <G> She says the clock is French.  My mother told her it was Napoleonic. My best guess that it's Second Empire, which is when Napoleon III, the Napoleon's nephew, ruled France, 1852-1870.  The style looks right.  I have a very vague memory that my grandmother might have acquired it in Vienna, which is where she was living when she met my grandfather. (Two Americans abroad! Romantic.)

The Christmas connection is because it sat on the mantelpiece above our fireplace, and it had three feet. Three kids in the family, so on Christmas Eve, stockings were hung, one per clock foot, and the contents were our first Christmas excitement. The three of us would wake up in the middle of the night and were allowed to harvest the stockings and take them upstairs where we'd spread out our loot on my sister's bed and we'd squeal a lot. I have memories of my mother calling up to us to get back to sleep!  Which we didn't, but many fond memories were forged on those night. <G>

Joanna: These crèche figures are from when I was a kid. A dozen or so plaster figures, painted, probably made in the 1940s. Not valuable ever. Multiply mended. 

I’ve got the central players spread out along the mantlepiece here. The actual crèche scene doesn’t get set up till Christmas Eve. The wise men will soon be spread out around the room, perched in bookcases, travelling, because they don’t get to Bethlehem till Epiphany. Over the years the crèche has accumulated all kinds of animals, some of them oddly small or large.

Front and center, among chickens and ducks, is a hedgehog. No nativity is complete without a hedgehog. Behind the hedgehog there's a little carved dog. Then there’s a pair of cats hugging each other. They are not terribly cat-like cats, but they're the only cats I have and I like cats. I think the turquoise goose contorted up in the back came home with my father from China in WWII but maybe not.

When the manger gets set up, the guy with the basket of eggs, (what is a chicken keeper called? A chickherd?) and the shepherd with his five or six sheep (you can't see him because he's out of the picture to the left) will be closer to the manger than the Three Kings because we're very egalitarian in our crèche.

Susan:  When I was a kid, I loved the miniature Christmas tree that one of my grandmothers always set out on her baby-grand piano in December, and now I have it in my own home. Handmade in the 1920s of wood and tinsel and foil, it's covered in tinsel spirals and tin and foil ornaments, with tiny painted presents under the tree. It's fragile and a bit shabby now, but still glittery and beautiful, and holds wonderful memories of my grandmother, who would play the piano while my sisters and I silly-danced around her living room (as a teenager, she played piano for the silent movies and knew lots of great tunes!). I bring it out every December, and in January, carefully wrap it up again. One day I hope to pass it along to my little granddaughter (who has my grandmother's piano in her house now!).

And when my husband and I were first married, a very special wedding gift was a big box of Christmas ornaments handmade by a friend of my parents--and we still put them on the tree every year. Here are two favorites on this year's tree--a tiny angel set against gold foil that reflects the light, and another with tiny figures of Joseph and Mary--in a hot-air balloon! (One of my kids, when little, was surprised to learn that Baby Jesus was born in a stable instead of a hot-air balloon.)

Whatever holiday you celebrate at this time of year, do you have a holiday treasure that holds special meaning? We'd love to hear about it!

Happy Holidays to all from the Wenches! Visit the blog often in December and January - we'll be posting each day from Christmas Eve to Ephiphany to celebrate the Yuletide as we leave 2020 behind and welcome 2021! 

Comments

[Mary Jo Putney]

Memories of family Christmas celebrations are what give such power to the holiday. I love reading everyone else's remembrances of times past.

[Alison Y]

Andrea,
I chuckled reading your account of the missing baby Jesus. We also had a missing baby and my father came to the rescue. He didn't have any beeswax, but he did have a bar of Ivory soap to carve. The resulting baby was white as snow, but as the years passed he became darker than the rest of the figures and, I believe, had a skin tone more comparable to what Jesus probably looked like.

[Andrea Penrose]

Oh, that's a marvelous story, Alison! Ivory soap—how clever! We both clearly had very imaginative and artistic parents.

[Sue McCormick]

There are only two of us, and we haven't the stamina to set up a tree (not even the tiny one) but I DO get out one special ornament each year. All of them contain memories from my childhood through the most modern times. We enjoy deisplaying our special ornament for the year.

[Pamela DG]

My grandmother made my brother and I Nativity sets from Ceramics. I love pulling Mine out, piece by piece and remembering the love that she put in to it.

[Denise]

Andrea, my grandfather was German and under their tree was a nativity with lambs exactly like yours. I think in the same way as your family, little bits were distributed around the family and my youngest sister now has the lamb. Fortunately, we have a picture from 1930 of my dad and his siblings under the tree with the crèche in the background and each child had a pile of books! Your picture brought back so many memories, we spent Christmas Eve at their Philadelphia row house every year with our 26 first cousins, pandemonium!

[Kareni]

What lovely stories! Thank you all for sharing.

I have some special ornaments that I favor -- four small crocheted animals (a duck, teddy bear, rabbit in overalls, and a dog). We have some Korean ornaments of instruments that my daughter plays as well as tiny teddies in native costumes. We have a couple of free form pāua shell angels to commemorate our trip to New Zealand. And we have several stars from Kwajalein that my mother gave us that are woven from something fibrous and decorated with what might be cowrie shells. We have an eclectic tree!

[Janice Jacobson]

You all have lovely collections of Stuff for Christmas and I have loved seeing them and reading your stories about them.

I have some things too - things I made back in the day, like the flock of stuffed birds made from scraps of cloth with yarn loops for head feathers and tails - but I no longer do a tree so they remain in their boxes. This year I did lights and put out the mungy tree and some holiday arrangements - but what with the lockdown and all, I haven't been much in the mood for decorating my place. Instead I have been enjoying what others have done with their homes.

Christmas has always been special to me as it was the one time of year my dad would be on his better behavior, the house would be decorated, my brothers would all show up, people would say nice things about my mother's Christmas dinner, and I would have the illusion of a close family for a day. And some new books to read, with any luck :) Now almost all of those people are gone and I miss them much more than I ever thought I would.

[Mary M.]

The first Christmas I was married, I wanted a tree-top angel like the one my grandmother had. "She" had fluffy blond hair, rosy cheeks, silver wings, a white plastic dress with gold stars, and a candle with a gold light. Must have been at least from the 1940s, maybe earlier. Not fancy, but special to me. I spent three hours after work one evening trying to find something like enough to qualify. Came home tired, hungry, foot-sore, and very disappointed. But what's this? A package waiting for me! My dear grandmother had sent ME, out of her 30-some grandchildren, her angel. She topped my tree for many years, until her rosy cheeks crackled from age. I think she might still be around here somewhere. Or maybe she got her wings and flew away ...

My other favorite, much bigger and very noisy, is Santa's Marching Band, which has Santa as band leader and eight elves, who, when it's plugged in, play Christmas carols by striking batons on brassy-looking bells. It's a hoot, and I love it.

[Andrea Penrose]

Oh, how fun, Denise! It must have been a very traditional creche, as my mother was from the German part of Switzerland.

It's so lovely to have childhood memories triggered by tiny things like the lamb. Your Christmases sound like great fun with the whole gang of cousins!

[Annette N]

When my children were small and we had pets, the bottom half of every tree was decorated with things which were unbreakable.

I had sewn stuffed teddy bears. We had foil covered paper cups (they looked like bells) and the children and I had baked flour and water ornaments. Some were cut out with cookie cutters. Others were made free hand. Each of them could have been used as lethal weapons. We had one lady in a yellow dress and I would bet she weighed at least one pound. She had to be on the lowest branch so when she dragged the branch down it was on the tree skirt.

The scene changes to recent years. I got a smaller tree and I divided the ornaments among my children. One daughter and one granddaughter were there to help me. Later at Christmas, when I went to decorate my small tree, I found I had given away most of my decorations....bare tree syndrome.

But, friends have been kind to me. I have won a few and I found some terrific ones at the Goodwill store.

There are still old things, which I set out. My Santa mugs. My musical snow globes. My Spode cookie jar in the form of a Christmas tree. And my two Nativity scenes. They are children's sets. One is wooden. And every year, they give me joy.

I just heard that the boyfriend of my oldest granddaughter has fallen in love with the stuffed teddy bears. Now is that not terrific? He obviously has good taste in granddaughters as well as stuffed teddy bears.

I hope everyone is taking care and staying well.

[Christina Courtenay]

I love that lamb - he's adorable!

[Teresa Broderick]

This was a wonderful feel good post! Some things that come out every year for our decorations are things my kids made when they were in school. There's a santa that's quite tatty now as he's only made from cardboard and cotton wool and a bells made from cardboard and silver paper. I don't know how they have survived as all three of my children are in their thirties now. The tree wouldn't look the same to me without these even among all the fancy ones we've collected over the years.
This year the santa is even adorning the top of the small tree on the landing. So many memories in these small things but such precious ones.

[Katja]

Your comment has touched me somehow. I've been thinking about it since Monday, so I send you a virtual hug. I hope you can enjoy your christmas and find some new books to enjoy.

[Christina Courtenay]

What a great idea Sue! I feel like I have too many ornaments. Better to vary them from year to year!

[Christina Courtenay]

Eclectic is good! I have a mixture of English, Swedish and Japanese Christmas tree decorations :-)

[Christina Courtenay]

I love the sound of your birds! And lights are always lovely - if could I’d have tiny twinkly lights everywhere! I hope you have a wonderful Christmas with lots of great book parcels!

[Christina Courtenay]

What a wonderful grandma! She obviously knew you would treasure the angel more than anyone else!

[Christina Courtenay]

How lovely Annette - he sounds like a keeper! Hope you have help with decorating this year too!

[Christina Courtenay]

It’s definitely the memories that count and not what things are made of! A very young relative of mine made me a tree decoration out of an empty toilet roll with glitter and stuff on and I treasure it because it’s from her.

[Anne Gracie]

Pamela, every year I used to make a "diorama" in a shoe box, dressing old fashioned pegs in bits of fabric, and. . . I can't remember how I made the animals when I was small. After I was about 10 my craft-minded godmother taught me to make small stuffed animals out of felt, and I made a donkey and a lamb and some others. The donkey and the lamb were my favorites and I only threw them out a few years ago, when they became moth-eaten.
But I did enjoy making that nativity scene every year.

[Anne Gracie]

Janice, most years I attend an "orphans" Christmas breakfast, with friends who have no family alive, or whose family members are far away. We didn't do it this year because of Covid, but it's a special thing and I lpve doing it.