Friday 1 January 2016

Christmas Past

Before we reach the Feast of the Epiphany and all the Christmas decorations come down, (unless you are one of those sad people who have removed every trace of Christmas by Boxing Day of course....) I wanted to write about a small piece of ephemera that I was looking at today which has evoked so many memories of Christmases past.

When I was 14 my Father asked me to make something to put in the small window next to our front door at Christmas. Our family has always been completely obsessed by Christmas, a real tree, (the bigger the better!) a wreath on the front door, every mirror and picture swathed with evergreens, not to mention the amazing decorations sent over from Fifth Avenue New York by my Aunt in the 60's ...

My response to the request was to make this little panel, at the time far brighter, out of card and tissue paper. It sat in that little window every year, a candle in a jam jar behind on the window fill casting it's jewelled light onto the ,usually frosty ,lawn and pavement outside.

 It was carefully stored away to be taken out every year, even after the first painful one when my Father died and for many after, until eventually ,my Mother downsized to a house on the coast which had no window to grace.... And there it stayed, languishing at the bottom of the decorations box until my Mum, moving to a flat with very little storage ruthlessly culled all her belongings. I had to save this though ( and to be honest many other things in the discard pile!) since when I have put it up on an inside door, I look at it and it makes me smile with all the memories of such a happy home.

As you can see though it is,like me, showing its age, 42 years of service is a lot for fragile tissue paper, so looking at it this year I thought that before it totally disintegrates making a more substantial copy will be the next project for my stained glass course, it will have to be tweaked a little of course but something to pass on to my Daughter, as well as the family obsession with Christmas that she has already inherited.

2 comments:

  1. I hope you had a good Christmas. It's really hard *not* to think of Christmases past, especially this year.

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  2. We did indeed, it makes you savour the moment more as you get older I think.

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