Saturday, December 17, 2016

CHRISTMAS GLASSWARE...

Christmas dinner in Boston was a mighty affair!
Grandparents, aunts and uncles, a bunch of cousins—even a few great-uncles (one in particular who was a lawyer; he was slightly on the shady side and smoked little cigarettes—my grandmother ran around after him holding a tiny silver tray just in case he wavered, spilled his ash).

I remember dressing up: little white socks with scalloped top edges and what we used to call Mary Jane shoes—black patent leather with a strap over the instep – dreadful things, but fancy enough for small children (they were named for Buster Brown’s sweetheart in the old comic series!).
          I had a crinoline and a taffeta dress, too – it itched like fury, but it was gorgeous – it changed color whenever the fabric moved. I was fascinated by that color-changing bit.
          I had a matching ribbon for a headband.

The dining room had two big windows along the outside wall; on the inside wall, opposite the windows, there were two doors into the hallway. There was a pantry, too, off one end—a magical space full of various sets of china; dinner plates and luncheon plates and butter and dessert plates; cups and bowls; drawers of silver (all wrapped in maroon or gray flannel protectors); all manner and kind of table accessories!
          The table itself?
          A centerpiece, of course; candles and place settings: Two forks (salad fork, dinner fork), two knives (salad and meat) and a couple of spoons (teaspoon, soup spoon). (“Work from the outside in,” my mother coached us.)
Sometimes a desert fork and spoon placed horizontally above the dinner plate, one pointing left, one pointing right.
Little bread plate to the left, with a bread knife across; silver salts with blue glass insides and tiny little spoons—oh, how I loved those tiny silver spoons; I imagined little people scooping salt from them.
And the biggest napkins I’d ever seen – blazing white, with my grandmother’s initials in the corner (VMH); not a stain on them, although I can’t imagine how that happened—probably due to Annie Sagan’s hard work in the laundry room downstairs.


And the glassware!
Crystal wine glasses with a tapered rim, a shaped stem and full bowl, with cut starburst and ivy pattern…after dinner my father would set all the glasses in a row, wet his finger and run it around the rims of the bowls, make the glassware sing!


It was magic to me back then; it is magic to me now.

10 comments:

  1. Sounds like our Christmas growing up, magical. Not the same now, with most of the previous generation gone and everyone scattered.

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    1. We're scattered, too -- from Maine to California (literally) -- and celebrations are different, too.

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  2. Big family dinners in my family have made for wonderful memories over the years just as yours have obviously done for you. And as we kids grew older, there would be a bit of entertainment after dinner: my cousin George would play his trombone, his sister Marian would play the piano, and I would sing. Then Aunt Frances would sit down at the piano and we'd all sing Christmas carols. Lovely, fun memories!

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    1. Yours were musical, eh? Mine involved mammoth cribbage tournaments -- double elimination affairs that went on for hours after dinner!

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  3. Our Christmas glassware was mostly for "on-the-rocks" drinks. You were quite the fashionable little girl. It's interesting how much you recall about the table setting and glassware!! Those napkins, wow!

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    1. I liked the sparkle of the glasses (ours had grape juice instead of wine); and those napkins were HUGE to me; in fact, they were about 16x16.

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  4. Sounds wonderful and very grand indeed. I must confess to not remembering too much about my own childhood Christmases, maybe because we didn't have any relatives to share it with, as we were in Australia and they all lived back in NZ.

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    1. Back when families were more concentrated -- we lived "far away" from Boston...probably 125 miles! That was considered "far" back then. Now, it's just a quick plane ride.

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  5. You painted such a wonderful memory of your Christmas meal. I too had Mary Jane black patent shoes and a party taffeta dress that my mother had made.

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    1. Did yours itch? Did it change colors? And, oh, those Mary Janes!!!

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