Tree Trimming…a nostalgia trip

 

My memories of Christmas as a child are pretty rosy and happy, but trimming the tree? Not so much. My folks, my brother, and I would go pick out a tree. When we got it home, Dad and John would put it up and string the lights, and then they were out of there. It was left to Mom and me to hang the ornaments. Not an exercise in family togetherness.

Grown, I resolved to make a party out of tree trimming. I gave our first party the first year we were in Fort Worth—1965—because we were far from family and knew few people (as it turned out my brother and his family surprised us and arrived in a converted bus, but that’s another story). That party began a long tradition. With a couple of exceptions, I gave that party every year until about 2015.

Preparations began in November, and I was very organized about it. List upon list—the guest list, the food list, the supplies list. Pretty much the same people came year after year, but always there were new faces to add and some who, for various reasons, were absent, though I never deliberately cut anyone off the list. But among my friends, the party became sort of a ritual. Anywhere from sixty to eighty people or more would come and go from the house, sometimes on a Friday, occasionally a Sunday evening.

In the early years I mailed invitations, usually postcards, addressing them way before Thanksgiving. A good friend and neighbor who was a calligrapher often designed them for me. Later, I stole Christmas images off the net. Somewhere I have a file of invitations, some quite striking. Toward the later years, alas, invitations were by email.

The deal was that I put all the ornaments out on a coffee table, and each guest was to hang at least one ornament. Many brought ornaments as Christmas gifts, and after a few years I had an amazing collection of ornaments, most with a story that I remembered. They are all now packed away in a box in the attic, and I think someday I should get them out and go over them, just for memories’ sake. Pretty much, everyone cooperated, and by the end of the evening, the tree would be resplendent. Of course, there was the year it started to fall over, and a good friend caught it.

But the food was my big deal. I began cooking and freezing way ahead. The week of the party, I put all the serving dishes out on the table, each with a scrap of paper noting what would go into it, a practice that led Christian to say to Jordan, once he was safely married into the family, “You and your mother have a screw loose.” It worked for us, and by then she was my sous chef.

Mostly the same dishes appeared year after year. If I varied the menu much or left out a favorite, I heard about it. Standard were a caviar spread which I love to this day, bourbon hot dog chunks (a favorite of my children), chili-cheese dip, the cheeseball which was traditional in my family when I was a child. Some years I did a bacon/cheese spread that Megan really liked. Once I tried smoked salmon, but serving it was a problem; the same held true the year I splurged on a crab dip. In the early years, particularly when my ex was still around, I bought a large jar of pickled herring and served it in a bowl—today I don’t think many would eat it, except me and Mary Dulle. And there were desserts—chocolate Bundt cake, Toll House bars, chocolate chip brownies. One year I made some kind of cookie that required dipping half of each cookie in a chocolate sauce—really time consuming, but when I didn’t repeat it, Christian complained.

Usually by ten-thirty everyone was gone, and I was left with clean-up. Some years, after I wasn’t quite so financially desperate, I hired a wonderful couple, Dorothy and Fred Goodspeed. She manned the kitchen end, and he passed among the crowd (hard to do with all those people in several houses, none of them large). With Dorothy in the kitchen, I never had much to do. After Mr. Goodspeed died, Dorothy helped for a few years, sometimes with her son, and then I hired a service called Party Angels. Finally, Jordan was my party angel, and we managed fine.

I gave up the party, reluctantly, when I was having health problems. I can’t remember, but I think I the last one was in 2015, when my hip problems were getting worse. Now, with me in the cottage where I can entertain maybe six people, it’s not feasible. We have talked of a huge party in the main house, and I’d love to do that, but with my friends, Burton friends, and mutual friends—well, there just isn’t room. But all those years of parties have provided me with so many rich memories to drag out at the holiday season and reflect on how fortunate I have been—in friends, in life. Here a toast to Christmas with all its joy!