Sunday, December 1, 2013

Christmas Tree Provenance

The angels crocheted by my lovely Dutch neighbor's one-hundred-year-old mother. Unfortunately my neighbor herself is not with us anymore,  but hopefully somewhere surrounded by angels.

One of the ornaments my daughter and I picked in Bergdorf last year.

Two ornaments made by my husband's grandmother, who is not with us anymore either.

If I have said this before I apologize, but the best house interior I have ever seen was in Chatham, New Jersey, where the proud house owner told me there was not an item in his house he did not know the provenance of. I suppose you need to be a certain age to have accumulated such things and he was in his fifties when I spent time with his family. I always think of them at Christmas because they used to have the biggest tree I had ever seen in a house, and now some years later I think it was the biggest Christmas tree I have ever seen period. It was easily 12 feet tall, and they used a ladder on wheels to decorate. Of course they knew the provenance of each and every ornament as well. Recently here in Hong Kong, I realized my next door neighbor had also been the next door neighbor there in Chatham, New Jersey, when I used to spend time in that magical house. It was one of those connections that made me think about the world and our place in it - but my thinking has of course not led to any answers. I did, however, vow to always have a tree like theirs, full of decorations with provenance, even if not quite 12 feet tall.

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