Some time in the middle of January I feel the urge to put away the holiday decorations. Twelfth night has come and gone, the ladies, lords, maids, musicians, birds, and pear tree have all been bestowed. I no longer wonder, as I did when I was a child, if the six geese were actually laying the five gold rings. And if so, what was up with that one slacker goose? I unpin, unhook, and gather Christmas things from all corners of the house, and spend a couple of days sorting them into tubs and boxes. Frassy helps.
Most of my candles are dripless, but surprises do happen. This one started out white with red stripes, but the result – well, in orange or black it would have been great for Halloween. Kind of creepy looking. The main, melty stub left wax behind when I pulled it out, plus there were all the drips at the bottom. My go-to candlestick recovery program worked perfectly: heat the oven to 200 degrees, put some paper towels on a sheet pan, lay the candlesticks down on the paper towels, put it in the oven until the wax melts onto the paper towels, take out, and when the candlesticks are cool enough to handle but still warm, rub them all over with a rag.
As much as I love putting the Christmas decorations up, it’s equally cheerful for me when I take them down. As my regular, everyday teacups and dishtowels go back into place, I appreciate them all over again: hello, souvenirs from all the years that have fed into this new one; January’s second fresh start. But I think I’ll leave the lights up a little longer. I string them on the inside of the windows, and they connect me to the snowy yard even when I stay inside.
I did plan to fold up the Christmas quilt from the bed, but when I went upstairs Frassy was already there, exercising her inerrant cat sense of where I wanted to work next. She struck this pose as I came in, possibly because she knows I find it adorable, lessening the chance that I’d shoo her away.
She settled in for a nap, and I realized it meant I could pot up my bulbs without her, um, help. I like to save the amaryllis and paperwhites for after Christmas, to fill in the gap between the end of the holidays and the start of gardening. Seed catalogs have already begun to arrive, but I’m stacking them up on their own shelf. I want to be able to find them again, but I’m not done with January yet.
The best thing about decorating the house for the holidays is unpacking my ornaments and distributing them through as many rooms as possible. Doug helps me carry all the boxes up from the basement, and as I open them I lift out every Christmases I ever had. Which at this point is a lot of Christmases. It’s true I don’t possess actual pieces from my childhood any more, but those from my children’s childhood recall my own to me. The stars made of bread-dough clay, flowers of cornstarch clay, and god’s eyes of yarn, emerge from their careful tissue wrappings as though in a sparkling blaze, and light up the winter day. I put on Christmas music, sing along, pour myself some eggnog, and restore the ornaments to the season they were made for.
I used to make these yarn angels – it’s why I taught my daughter to make them. My children, grown now, refer to these ornaments as my Holy Relics. I hang them alongside store-bought travel souvenirs and gifts from a lifetime of friends. Every year an ornament or two breaks, or falls, or in some other way meets the end of its useful life, and every year I make something new and add it to the tree.
Recently a friend gave me a stack of books she cleaned out of her house. There was a whole set of encyclopedias and an array of books she had once used teaching English in Poland, including dictionaries and songbooks. The pages of the songbooks were large and inspiring, meant as they were for lifting voices out of paper and ink. Pretty miraculous. I couldn’t read them, but I thought they made a glorious wreath.
The encyclopedia was in English, so I can tell you the pages that made this wreath were full of Billiards and Bergamot, among other Volume Two subjects.
My new tree ornaments this year were also made of paper, this time Japanese origami paper. Another friend showed me how to fold it into pairs of flower petals, which were then glued together to make a circle. To hold the pieces together while the glue dried, I used the miniature clothespins my Dad used as clamps when he made ship models. My children, my parents, countries I have learned from, countries I have traveled to, all these cultures and all these generations fill the branches of my tree. Multiculturalism is out of fashion these days, but it’s beautiful and memorable in my living room, here at the time of year when the light prepares to come back.
Robin Richstone 