Christmas Greenery
Every Christmas season, I get the husband to head out to the farm and find mistletoe for our house. He hates this. It's a pity that climbing trees just isn't as much fun when you're in your forties as it is when you're kid. This poisonous kissing prompt can't be found on ground level. It prefers the high branches and is surprisingly tough to harvest. Its stems and roots are tougher than they appear and do not want to yield to the shears. Of course, using clippers when you're a couple of dozen feet off the ground isn't as easy as it sounds either.
The husband has always enjoyed choosing our tree and cutting it down himself. As teenagers, he and his friends would supply their families with cedars. Walking the fields, looking for the just right tree is a good Christmas memory for me. He never minded trimming the hollies for my Christmas greenery either. I can see him, dirty and smiling, bringing in scratched arm loads of the barbed leaves. The aches he's gathered from mistletoe gathering make less warm mental pictures. Trying to make a perfectly round mistletoe bouquet like we had when I was a kid is a laughable memory. Now, I just tie on some ribbon and let the fresh cut stems hang from the small foyer chandelier. I'm ready to start Christmas decorating, but I've got painting to finish first. (Well, to be honest, the husband is taking care of it.) The bathroom is done, but my living room is buried under drop cloths and littered with brushes, rollers, tack cloths and pans. Most of my friends are already done with their lights and trees. A ribbon on the mailbox is all I've managed, and the winds took that somewhere down the road last night.
Days are dramatically shorter now. Every afternoon, I seem surprised that the sun is setting so early. It's time to bring some light back into this house. I want my holly, my ivy and yes, my mistletoe. I'm ready for my twinkling, glowing tree (which will look so nice in my freshly painted room). It's time to make sure that we hold onto the good traditions, and it's time to take care that we put the bad ones in their proper place.
The painting is Druids Cutting the Mistletoe on the Sixth Day of the Moon by Henri Paul Motte.
Christmas, mistletoe, art
posted by Cynthia at
7:30 PM
5 Comments:
I haven't started the painting or the decorating yet. Or the diet, now that I see the heading of your older post. Someday ...
I'm cutting WAY back on the decorating this year. In fact, three of my five Christmas trees are already at the cafe. This year, there won't be much point in decking the halls at home, since we're never here. I'm going to put up the bedroom tree, and have my sister help me with my living room tree--the one that holds my thirty years worth of Christmas memories. Compared to the last couple of years, that's really not much.
How neat that you're having painting done for the holidays. I'm sure it will look great.
The Bug and I plan to put our tree up this afternoon. That and a front door wreath is all we really do. Our guys either stand on top of a truck or jeep for some low hanging mistletoe or shoot it out of the tree. :o0 I love you closing sentence!
I guess it is because my family hails from North Carolina, but I thought the way to get mistletoe each season was to shoot it out with a shot gun (no kidding at all). Google shotgun and mistletoe together, you'll see. It's much more fun than climbing it. Just make sure that no one else is using the climbing method before you use the shotgun method, ok?
Chris
My Blog
I didn't know any of this about mistletoe. Blogging is soinformative.
And I love the picture.
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