Four Colly Birds! Or Maybe Just One..

  Well, the tree is all decorated, the mantles are ready for the stockings to be hung and garland is strung on the stair rail.  That is about the extent of my decorations this year.  I have called it quits in hopes that now I can rest a bit.  Today, I repacked the unused decorations to be stowed away for the next few weeks until this all starts in reverse.  As I was repacking the boxes, I came across one ornament that just screamed to be let out of the box and on display.  A tiny, plastic blackbird could not be hidden away in the piles of tinsel...it just would not be Christmas without it. 

  The tiny blackbird was gifted to me by my cousins.  It was on their Christmas Tree that I always remember seeing the blackbirds.  In a way, I sort of grew up at my Aunt Marie and Uncle Alfred's place.  I was there about as much as I was at home.  Every year, the blackbirds made an appearance on the tree and yet, I knew nothing about them other than the fact that I really liked them.

  While I do not know the history behind the little bird, I do know that Christmas just would not be the same without it.  How the birds became a family tradition or even where they were purchased remains a mystery with me and is one I should definitely ask one of my cousins.  All of this got me to thinking....why blackbirds at Christmas?  So a bit of detective work began. 

  It seems that this may have started way back around 1780 when the words to the European verse "The Twelve Days of Christmas" were penned.  At first, this was not a song but sort of a rhyme.  The twelve days actually refer to the twelve days AFTER Christmas and not before as we now believe.  The original verse states that there were four colly birds and not calling.  This changed over the year until finally the song has become the (almost irritating after the two billionth time of hearing it) song we all know.  It seems that not too many folks realized what colly birds were even at the beginning so the word evolved to calling birds.  Now to set the record straight, colly birds are actual birds.  Well, sort of actual birds.  Colly is a regional European word for sooty or grimy such as one might describe a chimney sweep (not to be confused with a Chimney Swift bird).  In the song, the word is used in reference to the European Blackbird (which is not a blackbird at all but rather is in the Thrush family).  Such fun! But now you know!

 I sat holding the little plastic blackbird and was transported back in time to the Christmas holidays of days past.  I remember the pine tree that Uncle Alfred would steady up in the living room with nails and string and I remember helping Margaret hang the ornaments on the tree while Aunt Marie was in the kitchen stirring up something delicious.  I do, indeed, have fond memories of times there. 

That, My Friends, is TALENT!

  Sometimes the talent of a person can astound.  Early this morning, I caught a certain niece of mine hanging a gift bag on the door handle of the old screen door.  She had good intentions of leaving that bag dangling there and slipping away unseen.  I fooled her!  Just as she was climbing back in that big truck of hers, I opened the door.  Well, she had no choice but to come on in the Little Bayou House and visit a spell.  The gift bag contained a gorgeous sweater that she and the rest of her "group of detectives" (from the recent Clue Hunt on the Bayou) had gotten for me as a show of gratitude for creating the hunt.  It was not a needed thing as this group is always welcome at the house but the thought nigh on overwhelmed me.  

  It was not the contents of that bag that has to do with Eva's talent.  As she readied to leave, she pulled out some ornaments that she painted.  OH, MY WORD!!  These were gorgeous!  That girl has more talent in her pinky finger than most folks of the world combined.  She amazes in everything she does and I have not found anything that she cannot do.  

  The ornaments were made of slices of wood that her husband (who is equally as talented, by the way) cut from some tree limbs.  On each, Eva painted.  I chose three that looked as if they belonged in the Little Bayou House but I have the idea to give them to Darling Daughter.  Elizabeth adores the Coast as much as I do and these will go perfect on her "Coastal Christmas Tree".  On the small slabs of wood, Eva had painted a shrimp, a blue crab and a Red Snapper.  Yep, those pretty much describe the Coast to a T!

  I cannot wait until tomorrow when Elizabeth stops by the house.  I am thinking she will like these as much as I do!  Plus...Elizabeth will now have a piece of Eva's artwork in her house.  There is nothing better than a handmade gift and when it is as beautifully made as this, it is all the better.  

A Little of This, A Little of That.....

  It is funny how some things seem to just stick around forever.  I have a wealth of more or less useless items that have, for some unknown reason, been entrusted to my care.  Since I have been dubbed the "Keeper of Weird and Wonderful Things", I do my best to preserve each and every one.  Why?  Who knows.  Perhaps it was instilled in me long ago that I should not toss anything that might serve a purpose some day. Who is going to follow in my footsteps and hang onto each and every one of these oddities?  Probably no one.  When my days on this earth come to an end, I have a feeling that that will be the final days for all of my treasures as well.  

  Today saw me pondering health and "hoarding".  Perhaps the lack of good health has made me feel the overpowering wealth of treasures that fill every nook and cranny of the Little Bayou House.  I like being surrounded by nostalgic items especially around the holidays.  It seems that memories can sometimes be a powerful force in our well-being.  

  Gathering together a good many of the antique Christmas ornaments made me realize that I have far too many decorations but it would break my heart to part with them.  I did promise to go through the mess after the holidays are over and at least toss anything that is broken beyond repair.  Even that is hard for a crafter since we are always thinking "I can make something with those pieces!"  (That mentality is why my craft room resembles a flea market!)  When looking over the latest box discovered in the back of the closet, I realized that most of these are light bulbs.  Mom and Pop did not have a lot of money to spend on decorations so Mom tied strings to burned out lights from my grandparents' place.  These became ornaments.  I thought of how cute the birds, Oriental lanterns and even the Santa bulbs must have been on a tree.  I have to admit that the floating head might have given me the willies, though!  To make matters worse, the head was "two faced".  Both sides had the same features.  Too scary for me.

  Some of these antique ornaments stay out all year long while others are whisked away to the upstairs closet when the tree, garland and lights take leave.  Collections, like memories, can become quite cluttered with age.  It just takes a bit of sorting now and again to straighten things.  I need to dust the cobwebs from the corners of my mind and from the knickknacks that fill the shelves.

Christmas Past...

I was visited by the "Ghost of Christmas Past" today.  No, this was not some spirited being but rather a flood of memories of long gone Christmas seasons.  Since it was a rainy day here on the Bayou, Son and I thought that it might be the perfect time to do a little of that decorating for the holidays.  We pulled out many, many boxes of decorations.  I have accumulated far too many decorations over the past years thus making it difficult to settle on any one "style" of adorning the Little Bayou House.  Perhaps it was time to start discarding some of these ornaments and other decorations.  As I opened box after box, I realized this was easier said than done.  Each item that was pulled from a box had some sentimental string attached to it. There were the gourd ornaments that Mark and Joanna brought back from Arizona.  There were the handmade ornaments from Elizabeth and Robbie several years ago.  There was the "stained glass" ornaments that were made by Michael when he was in the third grade of elementary school.  Ornaments from Mom and Pop's house, decorations from aunts and uncles, decorations from grandparents and great-grandparents all packed in boxes..all waiting to be unpacked.  I have things from so many folks and so many places.

Some of my favorite things were placed in a small display cabinet.  These are all antique treasures from Christmas Past.  Most are light bulbs from early electric Christmas lights.  I have no clue whether these things will even light up but they are just too pretty to toss.  It was hard to choose from the hundred or so light bulbs and vintage ornaments in the box.  I only had so many spaces in the small cabinet and so many treasures that I wished to display. These were from a time when pride was put into the creation of even things like light bulbs.  The detail in some shaped like birds is unbelievable!  Also in this little cabinet are eleven small porcelain bells of my mother's. I always remember her carefully taking them from their box and stringing them on a long ribbon.  This was then strung in a doorway between the old farmhouse kitchen and the huge living room.  Why there are eleven escapes me.  I assume at one time there were a dozen and when my siblings and I were tykes, one was broken.  Probably at the hands of one of us kids.  The largest mercury glass ornament in the cabinet always fascinated me with its swirls of colors.  Several other antique ornaments fill the rest of the cabinet.  These are treasures.  If this was all of such treasures that filled the boxes, I would have room to spare but alas, it is not.  There are so many that I sadly would never be able to display them all.  Many stay stowed away in boxes.  

My adventure in walking down memory lane made me think of little book that I found last Christmas.  That, too, was on a rainy time here on the Bayou.  Wishing to settle in with a good book, I went to the book shelves to select a suitable volume to read when I discovered a small version of the "A Christmas Carol" by Charles Dickens.  It had somehow been removed from its place with the other books on the shelf was sitting on the shelf near the Christmas Tree.  For the life of me, I could not remember ever seeing the book before.  How it wound up placed on the shelf near the tree was beyond me but it was the perfect bit of reading on a cold, windy and rainy Christmas Night.  Another "Ghost of Christmas Past"...another keepsake that is to be found among the weird and wonderful treasures of the Little Bayou House.