Bauble

Today

Here is Christmas, knocking on the door once more. We have bought some child=friendly Christmas tree decorations and, a few weeks ago, I picked up a box of 14 very pretty baubles. In fact, I now have so many Christmas decorations that I could trim about a dozen trees and have offered spares to Facebook friends.

We have also fixed up the fairy lights, outside and in, and hung a variety of wreaths and garlands up.

"We are so much more affluent these days", said Paul "when I was a child the decorations were wrapped up so carefully and used each year." "So have these", I said "but the trouble is, I keep buying more..."

In my Day

This conversation made me think about decorations at 4BH. No fairy lights, for one thing. The main decorations were: the tree (of which I've written in previous blogs) and the crepe paper decorations. Each year we would buy packs of coloured crepe paper from Woolworth's. These came in a variety of colours; red and green being prominent, but there were others - a sickly pink shade comes to mind. 

When you got home you removed the outer wrapping and then cut slices, about 2 inches thick across the width of the paper, through all thicknesses. This was quite a tough job for my little fingers.

Once that was done the strips were laid out; Daddy would heave in the tall ladder and attach the end of the strips to the central light fitting, securing with pins, Generally colours were alternated. Next the ladder was moved to one corner of the room and a strip would handed to Daddy. He would twist this so that it formed an elegant spiral and then fixed the end to the corner. The right amount of twist was essential; too much and the paper formed a knot, too little and it drooped dismally. Sometimes pieces were too short and had to be joined. Daddy went round the room in this fashion till we had a sort of pavillion of bright colour above us. I can't find a good picture of what ours looked, but this picture gives you a shadow of an idea.

These would stay until Epiphany when they were taken down and, indeed, preserved until next year.

In my teens I became rather snooty about these and would spent hours making giant snowflakes or paper angels to hang from the ceiling.

But they were a jolly show for little cash; pity we don't have ceiling light fittings at Spencer House!