The Ways of Displays at Christmas

This is the time of year when curmudgeons like me moan about how things aren't like they use to be - how Christmas was less commercial and things were simpler when we were young.   I found myself thinking that in November while regarding the Christmas lights on Regent Street.  As well as celebrating Christmastide - sort of - they also rang bells for a soon to be released animated movie based on my beloved Mr Peabody, but let's not go there.  A walk past the windows at Selfridge's would lead one to think that Christmas was about high-end perfumes and designer dish towels.  And Harrod's?  Well what can be said about that parody of a once great emporium that is now the Disneyland of department stores.  Though we didn't get a chance to stroll down Piccadilly I understand from a video (click here) that Fortnum and Mason eschewed last year's highly commercial salute to a theatrical chain's Panto mixed in with their fine food stuffs to once again display a little nostalgic animation in their windows.  Mind you their fine products are still very much on display but its things like Christmas pud, crackers and the like.

By the time we reached London we were pretty much pictured out; however here's a shot of
Regent Street during the day light hours.  I must admit I was a bit bemused by this year's
lights?  Mr Peabody and Sherman - well now there's a Christmas theme I never thought of.

Now Madrid is, or at least was, a different story.  The light displays there are created by well-known designers and reflect all sorts of styles and creativity.  Unfortunately we were only there for a few hours to change trains during daylight hours but did get a chance to get downtown.  And I hate to say it but LNB and myself both gave into the crass commercialism that appeared to represent Christmas at  El Cortes Inglés in Madrid.  After a wonderful lunch at De Maria we strolled over to the main store at Puerta del Sol and stopped off at their Christmas shop - hoping to, despite a vow of abstinence, find a Christmas ornament that cried "Spain".  Well we found lots that smirked "China" but nothing that you couldn't find most other places.

Sadly there was nothing at El Cortes Inglés that couldn't be found at any department story anywhere in the world. We had been hoping to find something that would remind us of our times in Spain but .......

By the time we hit the third floor of their six story Christmas store we were right smack in the middle of commercial Christmas with a capital C.  So if you can't fight 'em!

Laurent seems to have this, dare I say "unhealthy", obsession with mice.  And keep in mind this is
the man who will not take me to Disney World. But he'll cavort with El Ratón Mickey in Madrid.

Even Sidd bought into the commercialism - these straight gnomes!  And Cinderella was just his sort of girl - plastic!

Apparently Sulley (James P. Sullivan) got over his fear of the toxic touch of humans
or it may have just been Sidd's calming presence.

Sorry but Spidey was getting just a little too up-close and personal! 

And of course being selective in applying my curmudginliness I am truly delighted by the wonderful display that graces Henri Bendel's window in their New York flagship store.  Okay Al Hirschfeld may not have much to do with Christmas but his marvelous creations are cause for some sort of seasonal celebration.  Someone over at a Broadway musical group I belong to (You belong to a Broadway Musical group, says incredulous reader?  Quelle surprise!) discovered that the brilliant caricaturist is lining Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein at his worktable. 

A click on the poster heralding the Hirschfeld Spectacular will take you to  detailed photographs of the window and the iconic drawings that have been brought to, if not life, life size for the holidays.  And the store is decorated with Hirschfeld's - the originals as well as 3D reproductions.  And yes "Nina" is hidden in full view!

Okay maybe this old curmudgeon isn't entirely against commercialism - I noticed a bit of store promotion in quite a few photos of the old Eaton's windows that I loved so much.  And I guess that's the whole point of window displays - to get you in and to get you to buy.  But I do wish London would rethink those lights!  Mr Peabody and Sherman??? And not even the real thing just some cheap Dreamworks imitation!  What sort of Christmas celebration is that?

December  29 - 2003: The last known speaker of Akkala Sami dies, rendering the language extinct.

Mercoledi Musicale

It has been said -  perhaps with a grain of truth - that I never saw a Christmas tree ornament I didn't like. This has led to a a stock of (garish) goodies for our Yule bush that has reached the point where we have to pick and choose - this year only 4 of our silver balls made the cut.  Now there are some ornaments that grace the tree every year because of  memories of people, places and Christmases past - that's a given.  Of course it doesn't help that our current tree is much smaller than the one we had back in the days of the big old Victorian house and grand Roman apartment.

Now means that there is an embargo on any new ornaments!  Yeah right, like that is going to happen in the lifetime of the reigning monarch!  Though I did say that the ornaments we bought in Copenhagen,  Helsinki and St Petersburg last year were the the absolute last!  Well okay I lied.

Anyone who reads this blog with any regularity will know that one of the great loves of my life is Angela Lansbury.  Not the Angela of Murder She Wrote but the Angela of Broadway musicals, stage plays and incredible film performances.  I've been in love with her since the first time I saw her on stage in 1966 at the Schubert Theatre in Boston.  I posted about that eventful trip back in 2008 and that miraculous moment when a beautiful lady in a backless gold lame jump suit with a trumpet in hand appeared at the top of a spiral staircase and led us in a musical celebration of "Today" and erased all the horrors of that weekend.

Well that lady is appearing this year on our Christmas tree.  When I saw this ornament at Broadway Cares I knew that just one more wouldn't hurt.  Its the last one I swear.  No I will not get the other Broadway Legends ornaments - sure I love Gwen and Bernadette (Julie - not so much) but I now have THE Broadway Legend on our tree - so that's it for ornaments!  Honest!  

And here's the lady herself as an unemployed and broke Mame - heralding the season with the late, and wonderful, Jane Connell, Frankie Michaels and Sab Shimono. 

One of the lovely things that date's this a bit is young Patrick's observation that it's a bit early to be celebrating Christmas as its only "one week past Thanksgiving Day" - hell these days with "Christmas creep" the decorations seem to go up just after Labour Day!  A modern revival would have to change the lyrics to "it's two months 'til Thanksgiving Day".

And as much as the recording captures the joy of that original production there's nothing like seeing the lady in person to show you what "star power" is really about:

We've all grown a little learner (okay maybe not), grown a little colder, sometimes a little sadder and definitely a litte older but we still need a little Christmas.

December 11 - 1934: Bill Wilson, co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, takes his last drink and enters treatment for the last time.

I Mean Come On Now ...

.... how could you imagine that anything as garish as this would qualify as a Christmas ornament?

19 June - 1978: Garfield, holder of the Guinness World Record for the world's most widely syndicated comic strip, makes its debut

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Travels with Sidd - Not Really Ornaments

Honestly the charming items in these photos aren't really Christmas ornaments - they are local handicrafts. I mean we all know that two posts ago I made a vow that no more Christmas ornaments would enter our house and I have had every intention of holding true to that vow. But honestly it was all Sidd's fault.

I can't claim to be an authority on the link between elves and gnomes but I do know that Finland claims to be the home of Santa Claus so for all I know some of Sidd's relatives work in the old guy's shop way above the 60th parallel. Whatever the link may be Sidd seemed very much at home in Helsinki today. As we wandered through the Kauppatori Market Square - conveniently located just after we got off the boat - there were wonderful stalls with all manner of wares - fruit, flowers, vegetables, fish and local handicrafts. Strangely for him Sidd didn't spend much time admiring the displays of tasty dishes available at the small tent restaurants but he was drawn - twice - to one craft display. An elderly lady was busily cutting willow branches on the diagonal making thin almost scale like ovals. She then fashioned them into pine cones and balls that could, if you stretched your imagination, be hung on a tree come Christmastide.

Sidd settled himself amongst them and wouldn't move until I bought one or two or three! But not for our tree you have to understand, the four or five I bought are for friends. Well okay the one that Sidd bought and proffered as a gift will be on the tree - I mean after all when a gnome gives you a handicraft from the land of Santa Claus can you really refuse?

15 June - 1219: Danish victory at the Battle of Lyndanisse (modern-day Tallinn) establishes the Danish Duchy of Estonia. According to legend, this battle also marks the first use of the Dannebrog, the world's first national flag still in use, as the national flag of Denmark.

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Thinking of Christmas in June???

Anyone who knows me, or thinks they know me, knows that I have far too many Christmas ornaments. And even in the old days with a 9 foot tree many of them were left in the box at the Yuletide trim; and with a much smaller one in our new location even more find themselves nestled amongst tissue rather than pine boughs. And I have vowed more than once that enough was enough and there was not to be another Christmas tree ornament enter the house.

Well that was until I saw this really sweet Danish solider in full dress uniform in the Royal Copenhagen store on Stroget! No I don't mean a real Danish soldier I mean this blown-glass chappie in the busby standing guard outside the Amalienborg Palace.  I mean how fine is he going to look seven months from now hanging in a place of honour on the tree????

And I swear, once again but this time I mean it, this is the last Christmas ornament I will buy. Honestly!

12 June - 1942: Anne Frank receives a diary for her thirteenth birthday.

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Decking the Halls

Though the halls are not being decked as elaborately as they were in the past - during our time in Mexico City our Ambassador's wife remarked that our apartment looked like Eaton's windows at Christmas - there are still a good number of decorations that are being used to give our current residence a feel of Christmas.  Many of them have been around for years and have a significance not just to the season but to celebrations and events of the past.

I bought these two little carollers at the Bay on Rideau Street here in Ottawa
back in the early 80s - I don't recall seeing anything like them since. 
They may have found a place on one of our earlier trees but for the longest time
they have sung their carols perched on this evergreen bough.

More years ago than I care to think I bought two little papier-mâché and felt carollers and made a decoration for the crown of the eight foot high armoire that graced our various living rooms - and is now found a home with my brother-in-law and his wife - for many years.  It was a large piece of furniture with stunning feathered mahogany veneer and dated from the early 1800s.  Laurent's mother had save it when someone had thrown it out to be hauled away as garbage.  It dominated any room it was in but strangely the one place that it fit in perfectly was the small living room of our first house.  A house which figured mightily in my go-for-broke if not quite baroque Christmas decorating phase.  Sans armoire in our homes abroad the two little carollers became decorations for the front door and are serving that purpose once again this year. And they are also serving as the link to the postings to my favourite Christmas carols on the sidebar at the right.

The new tree with my silver balls in place.
A time honoured tradition continues.

Several people have asked - well okay no one really ask but its a good way of making a transition - about our tradition of Silver Christmas balls.  Well there had been some discussion about whither they would be put on the tree this year.  In other years we had a nine foot tree that fit with room to spare in the houses or apartments we lived in - unfortunately the our current apartment is a bit more restrictive.  So the good people at St Vincent gratefully took the old very large tree and the good people at Canadian Tire gratefully took our money for a new much smaller tree.  However we no longer have room for all the ornaments that have been collected over the past 40 or so years.  Some hard choices had to be made - the silver flowers of Christmas didn't go up but the Wedgewood ornaments did; the blown glass apples and oranges from Poland didn't go up but the Russian enamel did.  There was some talk about the trouble involved in getting my silver balls all bright and sparkling for the tree and the amount of time it would take but that argument gave way to a wave of nostalgia -  did we honestly want to break a 34 year old tradition?

Even in Mexico I don't recall the tarnish being so bad - they were almost black.
Ah well that's why silver polish and elbow grease were made I suppose?

So last Saturday silver polish in rubber gloved hand and an old frayed flannel nightshirt torn into usable strips I set to work polishing my balls.  Oh for god's sake Cecilia stop it - I can bloody well hear you chortling from here!  I don't think I've ever seen them so tarnished even in the soup-like pollution that was Mexico City.  The sea air in the shipment?  Adjustment to the relatively unpolluted but humid air of Ottawa?  Who knows but tarnished they were and it took almost 4 hours to clean all 30 of them.  But polished and gleaming they were put on the tree in an unbroken tradition that reaches back to 1979.  Somethings you just don't toy with - I guess  my silver balls are one them.

17 dicembre/December - San Giovanni di Matha

A Tree of Memories

For the first few Christmases Laurent and I were together I liked to do "theme" decorations for Christmastide - toy soldiers, story book, music, colonial, birds. Neiman-Marcus, Horchow and Bloomingdale catalogues and The Bay would be scanned for appropriate items; one year it was brass trumpets, carol books, music sheets, toy drums and mandolins; the next bright red cardinals and birds nestling amongst apples and cranberry strands. Garlands festooned the rooms and various paraphernalia of the season adorned mantel pieces, tables and almost every available space. When she came into our apartment in Mexico City one Christmas our Ambassador's wife said she thought she had stepped into Eaton's window. I would like to think she meant that in a nice way but I have a feeling it really meant she thought it was a bit OTT.

Our first Christmas in Mexico in 1986 our friends Sandra and John gave us the little kitten - or rather their cat did - it has been on every tree since. As has this gingerbread man that my mother gave me a year or two before. And that first Christmas in the apartment from hell in Chicago was brightened by Rick and John and a colonial motive with this wooden angel bringing us tidings that were indeed joyful.

I started collecting a few of the annual ornaments - our famous or infamous (pick your adjective) Silver Christmas Balls, Silver Christmas Flower Medallions from Towle and Wedgewood Jasper Ornaments. One year I picked up 250 hand twisted tin icicles at a Christmas Market in Ottawa - as with all that silver as I polish it I utter a curse as each icicle is hung on an individual branch. As we travelled - Christmas has been spent in Ottawa, Mexico City, Cairo, Chicago, Hong Kong, Warsaw, Montreal, Rome and Niagara-on-the-Lake - I began to pick up ornaments here and there. In Poland a wealth of blown glass ornaments began to adorn the tree - though I never did get that dill pickle that so many people thought was a must. And friends and family gave us ornaments as the years past - for some reason particular favourites seems to be dachshund related. And because Laurent is allergic to pine we have had any number of artificial trees - some big, some small - the current one is 9' high and thank god pre-lit.

One summer weekend in the 1990s my dear Ryan and I were in Cooperstown for the opera and a visit to the baseball museum. Like most small upstate towns it had a Christmas shop and I admired this Santa in the Moon. Later that evening I found it wrapped beside my dinner plate - it has since lost the heart that Santa was fishing for. Poland was the place to buy glass ornaments and this jolly snowman clown was a gift from Betty Jean and Steve our second Christmas there. I bought two of the London telephone booths and gave one to my darling Deb months before Christmas. She hung it in her kitchen window in Pointe Claire to remind her of home. Now it reminds me of her.

This weekend as my favourite Polish carols played in the background we began unpacking the boxes of ornaments and decorations and with the unpacking came a flood of memories. Themes have come and themes have gone but certain ornaments reappear whatever the theme. Now when I look at our tree I realize that over the past decade the theme has become "memories".

Many years ago when Neiman-Marcus was a place of wonders rather than just another store peddling designer items, they featured a series of felt mice in their Christmas Book. I bought one each year - the first was a Victorian Nanny with her charge; the next year Clara with her Nutcracker; the third was a Candy Cane Princess. Our first daschie Bundnie loved the little Nanny and would retrieve it from the tree and carry it around in her mouth. She never damaged it just trotted from room to room and occasionally hide it in the middle of the floor. Her look of surprise when we found it always gave us a laugh.

With almost each unwrapping a place or more importantly a person who has touched our lives came to mind. There are so many - thank god for the 9' tree: the cloth gingerbread man my mother gave us over 30 years ago; a kitten filled stocking from Sandra and John in Mexico in 1986; a wooden colonial angel from Rick and John from one of our many Christmases together, that one in Chicago; a Lyric Opera decoration from Cathy from the second year there; porcelain Chinese dolls from Dianne and Jean-Paul our first Christmas with them in Hong Kong; the old London Telephone Box - I bought one for our tree and another for my darling Deb; a besweatered daschie from Sophie and Andrew; the Santa in the Moon that my much missed Ryan gave me in Cooperstown now sadly minus the heart he had caught while fishing; the skaters frolicking on a silver pond from Laurent's mom and dad; from our Naomi the strange little man who each year climbs the tree in an attempt to reach the star. And that star! Its nothing grand just one of those old tinsel affairs I recall we had on our tree as a child. We picked it up in a dollar store 30 years ago and each year Laurent places it on top of the tree.

As I put the final icicles on the tree today I listened to Dylan Thomas reading his "A Child's Christmas in Wales". It is one of my Christmas favourites and several years ago Laurent found a miniature copy of one of the first editions - complete down to the wonderful Fritz Eichenberg woodblock illustrations. It has a special place in my heart and on the tree. And that little squat man has been climbing up the tree since our friend Naomi found him in a shop in London and decided he would be a fine addition to our Christmas decorations. In over twenty years he has never quite reached that old tinsel star.

After Laurent put the star up last night we stood back and just quietly looked at our 33rd Christmas tree - a tree that reminds us of people loved, places visited and moments shared. It seems to me that "memories" is not a bad theme for a Christmas tree.

20 decembre - San Domenico di Silos

Madrid Nights - Christmas Lights II

Though all of the centre of the city was ablaze with lights two areas were particularly beautiful - to my eye at least.

After a duck out of the rain into the marvelous art nouveau El Pabellón de el Espejo and a much needed aperitvo we head out along the side streets off Paseo de Recoletos which led us to the edges of the Chueca area. We followed a broad ribbon of lavender lights that led us into Plaza de Chueca.

Those rainbow colours - and the artistic arrangement - should have told us we were heading straight - you should excuse the expression - for the Plazza del Chueca.

The most elegant light display was the forest of winter trees on the stretch of Calle Alcala from the Plaza de la cibeles to the Puerta Alcala. The tree patterns changed depending on where you were standing and the depth of the vista. It was a truly magical creation of light and dimension.

06 gennaio - Epifania

Madrid Nights - Christmas Lights - I

At the best of times I'm sure that the centre of Madrid at night is a fascinating sight but over the Christmas season the imaginative use of lights gives it an added magic. And its not just the main avenues and well known boulevards; back ways and side streets are strung with lights to celebrate the holidays.
Plaza de la red de San Luis had this modern skyscraper of lights as its centre piece and Gran Via was strung with matching festoons. It gave the appearance of a modern city receding into the night.
Whereas Passo del Prado was all multi coloured wreaths suspended in the darkness. And the pedestrian boulevard that runs down the centre dotted with trees of lights.
And a small side street was a bit more traditional with candles and holly.

Plaza de La Cibeles was very modern with abstract patterns surrounding the fountain and a forest of suspended light icicles heading down Paseo de Recoletos.

Around our hotel at Plaza de San Martin, on the Arenal and Alcala Christmas balls and abstract clouds led down to the gigantic tree at Puerta del Sol.

05 gennaio - San Giovanni Nepomuceno