Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas

I’m linking to a fun holiday decorating blog party here

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Vintage silver and gold glass grapes and silver candlesticks

Whew! Did you hear that giant sigh of relief? That was me, happy to have nearly all my Christmas decorating completed. And yes, there are still another half dozen bins of stuff down in the basement. After having two different homes on our neighborhood’s Christmas tour three different times, we (and by we I mean I) have accumulated a lot of holiday decorations. A veritable buttload, my husband would say. When your house is on a Christmas tour, you find yourself putting Christmas trees in the claw-foot tub in your son’s bathroom (2008), and your husband’s office (2008). You find yourself painting your office walls only hours before the tour begins (2000). You sweet-talk your girlfriend and her daughter into wallpapering your bathroom the night before the tour. (1996). And of course, you buy miles of garland and enough lights to string halfway around the world. Why? You rationalize that you are doing this for the betterment of mankind. But really, if you’re me, you can’t not. If you’re me, you fervently believe that anything worth doing is worth overdoing. But this year, we are not, thankfully, on tour. So I’ve simplified. Bwahahahahaha. Who am I kidding? I thought I’d share pix of some of my Christmas collections. Unlike most people, my collections are not numbered, signed, or dated. There is no Christmas Spode in my cupboards, no Christmas villages on a tabletop. Nor are there any artisan-made velvet Santas. I like all these things, but they do not speak to me. What speaks to me are old dime-store decorations. Brush trees from Woolworth’s. Plastic Santa candy containers from Kresge’s. Honeycomb snowmen from stores that haven’t existed since the ’60s. For years and years, I’ve picked up my kitschy little cuties at estate sales and the occasional dealer, especially when I’m junking in the Midwest. Some of my vintage treasures still have their yellowed original price stickers or grease-pencilled prices pencilled on the bottom. Hmm. When was the last time you found anything for 19 cents? Me neither, but these guys remind me of those simpler, cheesier days.



Vintage (mostly) snowmen snuggle up in the secretary.



I love looking at vintage Christmas collectibles on blogs and at antique shows, but I only add to my own collections when I find things on the cheap. The thrill of the hunt, you know. And I love arranging everything around the house once the bins have been brought up from the basement. I put on my Sinatra, Crosby and Nat King Cole Christmas CDs, and light an aromatherapy candle and commence to putter. I line up the brush trees, some of them shedding their glitter and rusted branches like their real-life counterpart in the living room, on the shelves of the Welsh cupboard in the dining room.

Vintage brush trees sprout among the transferware

The snowmen have found a home in the glass-front secretary in the living room, and the Santas and elves are always perched on top of my collection of vintage picnic baskets, thermoses and breadboxes in the old pine armoire. This year, with Miss Molly toddling around, it’s good to be able to gently close the armoire doors to keep busy fingers away.

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Santas and elves congregate on picnic tins and thermoses.

Little lost lambs mingle with plastic reindeer



This year, the lambs, most of which were probably orphaned from old nativity sets, decided to herd up with the plastic reindeer on a silver tray on top of the mahogany chest by the sofa. But other years, they’ve paraded across the mantle. I’m hoping the lambs won’t ridicule the reindeer for their missing antlers, or for being so woefully out of scale, compared to the sheep.





Santa mugs and jug lined up on kitchen windowsill