The 12th edition of Cabinet of Curiosities returns home for the holidays after stepping out with other fine hosts. This is the season when we dust off the household gods, deck the halls with items wonderous strange, and mabe repeat the stories behind the objects as they emerge from the tissue paper or wadded newsprint to find a place of honor on hearth or bow. Perhaps you will be inspired to share some of your treasured holiday curiosities, be they the one-legged jumping jack that your great grandfather made that hangs on your tree or the candy dish your ancestor swiped from the Waldorf Astoria that now holds the thin mints next to the holiday roast. From 'Walking The Berkshires' - Cabinet of Curiosities host Tim Abbott:
Ah, yes, I do have any number of chipped, cracked, broken, or otherwise unwanted items that I've saved for Christmas over the years. If no one else wants it, it seems the family thinks -'Diane'! On my bookshelf now, for example, is one of the very same angel candles that appears in a Christmas 1960 family photo. Yes, she's a little yellowed and her nose is dented, but otherwise she's 'perfectly good', almost 50 years later.
Then there are those (just a little) bent and scratched Christmas tree candle holders that my dad gave me, warning me "Never, Ever, Ever" to light a candle in them (he'd seen too many fires), and there is that lovely bowl of great grandma's - good for spicy potpourri - if you position it just right, who will notice the nick in the rim, after all.
Among my favourites though are the Christmas cards and other ephemera. Most of them are ones from my childhood, like this Santa with a genuine glint in his eye and one picturing two naughty children. And I do now have some I've collected myself, for instance, the Woodward's Beacon newsletter (Woodwards Stores, originally a Vancouver, BC, company, sadly, is no longer. More from this soon perhaps in another holiday post.)
One of these cards though must have been a special one in its day - the Xmas 'Spoon-ey' one. There's no writing in it - perhaps there was a note enclosed instead.
Hoping you won't get 2 SPOON-EY THIS XMAS.
Inside it says:
When TWO SPOONS
have been SPOONING,
By Night and by Day,
And the Years have rolled on
and the time slipped away,
And PA'S patience has got
to the end of it's [sic] tether,
It's time that these
TWO SPOONS
got TIED UP together.
And for you young'uns...spooning according to my mother, involved a little hand holding, maybe a kiss and a cuddle, nothing serious at all, but potentially embarrassing all the same.
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