rom my house to yours, best Christmas wishes to you all. I remember crossing the country on the train one Christmas. From our room with a view, all of America went speeding past our window. Up until then, I always thought (if I thought at all) that Christmas was a local thing, my house, my neighborhood, my downtown; maybe it got a little broader when we got in the car in our jammies to go see the lights on special streets called Candy Cane Lane and Frosty the Snowman Avenue; but still, I never got the full view of Christmas in America until that train trip.
hose nights on the train introduced me to a whole new reality…even tiny houses, out in the middle of nowhere, are decorated right now; houses deep in snow with just one string of lights outlining the porch; pretty brick houses in the Midwest with a single candle burning in each window, wreaths on door after door. When the train came into a town, we had long looks down small-town main streets, with lights and streamers decorating the lamps and festooning over the street; trucks pulled up to crossing stops with wreaths on their bumpers …and sky scrapers reflected twinkling lights into the Chicago River. Sometimes, chugging along, we could look right into cozy living room windows and see the trees all lit up inside. It gives me great comfort to know we are all in this boat together.
s you can see, my Christmas Crackers are going to double as place cards. They’re so fun to make, I thought you might like to see. We’ve been saving paper towel rolls for a few months now. I cut off about an inch and a half from each roll (so they aren’t immediately recognizable as paper-towel rolls!), and wrapped them all exactly alike, because I want my people to think I bought them and be surprised by what they find. We filled them with little things or long narrow things, because that’s all that would fit.
O much fun hunting for this stuff, thinking of the person, figuring out what we can squeeze into that narrow roll–my favorites are cute things that are also useful: vanilla beans, vegetable peelers, nail polish, seam rippers, pie birds, toys, light-sticks, vintage ornaments; we managed to squeeze in a couple of Santa hats; silk scarves, screwdrivers, birthday candles; our music man got a harmonica; if we’re lucky, there’ll be a spontaneous after-dinner sing-along!
ind of an expert now, I could do a pretty good list of all things 1 1/4" wide! They’re for us to open after Christmas dinner, a gigantic conversation piece I hope; everyone, for example, got a glue-on mustache, all in different styles. Extremely useful, for important laugh factor. If our guests enjoy these half as much as we did making them, we will be happy!
