Tree and teddybear
As we trimmed the tree, it dawned on me that we didn't have enough alternating red and white light strands to cover it, and the top would look stupid with only white. So I started painting the lights, and got so obsessed I painted the leftover strand in custom colors for next year. I wanted a pale champagney-gold, not that glaring yellow-amber the lightmakers call gold, and a true crimson, not pink or santa-red.
My project--because that's what my simple impulse turned into--required hours of product research, because I married Smokey the Bear. Andrew needed to see an email from the paint manufacturer before he would permit my project to continue.
Hah! It was safe! I was almost surprised. But if you can fire Pebeo glass paints in an oven, why not? I dug out a few soft paint brushes and got to work. Granted, I felt like an idiot stringing lights around the kitchen so they could air-dry. Yet it was deeply satisfying.
Every year, I've noticed, there's one thing I get compulsive about. One thing that takes disproportionate time and energy and is wacked enough to make Andrew wonder what time of the month it is.
It started with the Buche de Noel. I worked nonstop from Saturday morning until late in the evening, making moss out of pistachios and dusting the tops of the tiny meringue mushrooms with cocoa powder and painting the gills with fudge.
I've never done it again.
Same with the next year's project, pomanders of clove-studded oranges with velvet bows. And then there was the year I painted surrealist snow scenes on all the mirrors... the year I sewed stockings out of burgundy brocade and green velvet with elaborate tassles the dog promptly chewed... the year I used splotchy amateur calligraphy to inscribe and address all 100 cards.
I honestly don't know what comes over me.
No, I don't read Martha Stewart--that would mean I'd keep doing the Yule log and the calligraphy and just add more projects every year, until the Thorazine ran out.
And no, I'm not one of these crazed Christmas people who run around urging merriment. We've even stopped exchanging family presents because we wanted to just hang out and enjoy each other's company, without all the hassle.
But there's something about this time of the year-- maybe it's the cold, dark evenings that make me want to stay home by the fire. Maybe it's sublimation, because we don't have kids and they're the point. Or maybe it's just that for centuries, Christmas has inspired better decorations and more culinary indulgence than any other holiday. Fourth of July gets that godawful blueberry and cherry Jel-lo thing and a bunch of charred shriveled hot dogs. Halloween's a bit Salvador Dali. But Christmas! (And no, I'm not being p.c. here. We celebrate Hanukkah too, but Dreidels don't cut it.) Christmas really does go all out. You can roast chestnuts (yep, did that once, too) and bring trees inside and do kind things without making people suspicious. The lights transform the dullest street; the eggnog and fudge and cookies make even ulcerated Calvinists smile tentatively and reach toward the tray.
I always want to be part of that. I want to give a huge chunk of my normally practical, parsimonious life to something silly, just because it's fun and festive.
I suppose making more than a single halfassed attempt at each of these feats would make good sense--but repetition would turn them into a chore. And if I made enough Buche de Noels and did enough Uncial script, I might even get good at it, which would take the fun away!
That, I guess, is the childish impulse here: to try something new. To run around gathering up supplies the way we used to raid our grandparents' pipe cleaners (why did they always have them? just for us?) and gild mom's macaroni. To sit down at the kitchen table and focus vast amounts of energy on something with no practical consequences whatsoever.
Except the lights do glow softer now.
--Jeannette Cooperman, staff writer
