Tag Archives: christmas

Staging Christmas

22 Thursday Dec 2016

Posted by in Events, material culture, personal, Philosophy

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The house on High Street, Noank CT, 2000

The house on High Street, Noank CT, 2000

It’s pretty stagey to begin with, isn’t it? Full of ritual, some so old we don’t know why we still perform them. What I like best is the food, not the cakes and cookies, delicious as they are, but savory meals and the warmth of a full table. Second to that, decorating.

The past year has given me opportunity to reflect on the tasks I love, and why, and the basis for the work I’m passionate about. Curiously, it began in high school, as the props mistress for drama productions, morphed into installations, performance art, and site specific sculpture in college, before metastasizing into exhibition development, installation, and historic house interpretation with a side line in living history because, you know, costumes. Things and I go way back, and thinking about that made getting ready for yet another Christmas more fun.

Providence, 2016

Providence, 2016

Embracing the staginess makes the sometimes uncomfortable family closeness easier; I have proposed celebrating by reenacting a Don Draper Christmas, as long as someone else does the driving. Adding a layer of actual performance somehow made it easier to understand, a phenomenon opposite to what happens when you write a word over and over until it makes no sense. It’s the same distance you feel when you really try to understand someone’s past, and how they think. It’s familiar, but somehow unrecognizable.

This is probably the last Christmas in this apartment, which adds a poignancy to the proceedings, and it’s the first interactions for some participants, so, as with What Cheer Day, I’ve set a stage and we’ll see what happens.

Christmas with Katie, Chicago.

Christmas with Katie the Cat, Chicago, ca 1978

Every year, some things are the same: a balsam fir, candles, apples, cats. The characters and locations ebb and flow, with some consistency. Cats come and go, the boy grows. The love remains the same.

Dreams of Summer

15 Thursday Dec 2016

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Clambake, International Association of Fire Engineers, 1916. RIHS Graphics Collection G1173

Clambake, International Association of Fire Engineers, 1916. RIHS Graphics Collection G1173

I will visit the beach in Rhode Island any time of year, even to the point of dragging Drunk Tailor there in January (I really like water). But as the wind speeds rise and temperatures drop, I begin to dream of summer, and especially of summer meals.

This 1916 Clambake program and menu is in the RIHS Graphic’s Ephemera Collection, and while not quite Wiener Werkstatte quality, the dramatic graphic style captures the zeitgeist of the early twentieth century.

Menu, International Association of Fire Engineers, 1916. RIHS Graphics Collection G1173

Menu, International Association of Fire Engineers, 1916. RIHS Graphics Collection G1173

Inside, the menu captures the flavors of late summer New England, from the Baked Clams with melted butter to Green Corn, cold Boiled Lobster and Iced Watermelon for dessert. It’s time to start planning Christmas menus (I finally caved and brought in a tree, much to the delight of the feral cat), and fish is always on the list. Our tradition has evolved from the Christmas Eve bouillabaisse of my childhood through salmon with dill to a New York Times fishmonger’s stew. I certainly have the tureen for such a production, but the capacity is large, and with only three adults to eat the stew, I wonder at the sense of making up such quantities.

Tureen in the wild

Tureen in the wild

Quonochontaug Clam Bake Can ca. 1970. RIHS Museum Collection.

Quonochontaug Clam Bake Can ca. 1970. RIHS Museum Collection.

I could assemble a clambake for home, and boil it up on the stove in Don Draper’s 1962 kitchen– that’s a more recent tradition than the sand-pit variety– but it seems slightly mad, as all (potentially) good ideas can seem. It’d be July at Christmas, and although I’d miss the smell of the ocean, the cry of the seagulls, and the warmth of the sun on a late summer afternoon, it might be worth the effort.