Deck the Halls

Anyone who has read this blog in the past knows that last year I made a solemn vow (and I believe also the year before) that there would be no more ornaments bought for our tree.  Enough was enough!  It was fine when we had the 9 ft tree but now that we are in closer quarters there are three feet less to decorate.  And that makes a difference - this year certain decorations were not even taken from their place in the big decoration box.  However ....  and you just knew there had to be a however didn't you?  As we decorated the tree I realized that there was one Christmas legend that was missing:  we didn't have a Krampus!  I mean how can you have a Christmas tree without a Krampus on it?

Well that has now been remedied and an image of the beast is now hanging on our tree as a warning to all bad little boys and girls!

Krampus now hangs on our tree - ready to give a sound switching to naughty boys and girls;
and ready to cart the very bad off in his basket to.... well heaven only knows where.

For those of you who may not know Krampus is a demonic sort  who shows up on Saint Nicholas Eve (December 5th)  to punish all the bad little boys and girls in Austria, Bavaria and Eastern Europe.  The naughty are given a taste of his switch and the really bad are thrown into his basket and carried away - some say to his lair others to hell.  Now if that doesn't make you behave yourself nothing will.

Frankly I'm not sure I would trust either Saint or Demon to bring me a gift
the way they are portrayed on this Austrian greeting card.  One looks almost
as ill-natured as the other.

Krampus often accompanies the good Saint on his rounds on December 6th - I mean you can't expect a saint to do the dirty work can you?  So it seemed only right and proper that if we had someone to punish the bad we needed someone to reward the good.

Cut out sheets like this were popular at one time, particularly in Germany and England
- and the days before Christmas were spent cutting, pasting and assembling all manner of
decorations for the holiday.

I have a bad habit (well several really) of buying facsimiles of the sheets of old cut out toys, theatres etc.  I have every intention at the time of purchase of snipping, cutting, folding etc but often the lovely coloured sheets languish for months or sometimes years.  A fine example is my working model of the Pantomime Theatre in Tivoli complete with Peacock Curtain.   And another would be the Sankt Nikolaus that I bought in Dresden just after Christmas back in 1998.  It was meant to grace our Christmas festivities in 1999 but somehow got rolled and stored away.  It moved back to Canada with us and saw three or four more moves until I came upon it - creased and a bit worse for wear - just last week.  So foam board, glue stick, exacto-knife and paper fasteners in hand I pasted, cut and assembled him last Sunday.  

Finally Sankt Nikolaus has taken his place greeting anyone coming to our door between now
and January 6th. 

He now welcomes all the good boys and girls who knock on our door with a promise of all manner of games, horns, drums and goodies.  And once inside as they can look at the tree and see what would have been waiting for them if they had indeed been naughty rather than nice.

December 20 - 1999: Macau is handed over to China by Portugal.

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.

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

Christmasy Things - Of Trees and Balls

I meant to post a picture of the tree earlier, but what with decapitating geese for dinner - don't ask! - and things it fell by the wayside. So here it is with all the various baubles, bangles and beads we've collected over the years. The pig and roast turkey from Munich, the two ceramic creations from Spoletto and this year's Silver Ball are all in place. I couldn't find the wood ornaments from Salzburg but probably wouldn't have had room for them anyway. We are either going to have to stop buying Christmas ornaments or get a bigger tree!

A right click on the tree will give you a close-up.

And before Dora, Cowbell, EG or one of the others - and you know who I mean - say anything rude: yes we got our Silver ball and yes I polished all 30 of our balls. Number 30 - and given the cost, the last - arrived and was hung - Sling you are going to get such a slap... Sage stop it - in place on Christmas Eve.

Sullied and Soiled - a beautiful tradition sullied and soiled. Or were they a vaudeville team back in the '30s?

30 dicembre - San Ruggero di Canne