Here We Come A-Wassailing Barbie

Here we come a-wassailing
Among the leaves so green,
Here we come a-wassailing,
So fair to be seen:

Love and joy come to you,
And to you your wassail too,
And God bless you and send you,
A happy New Year,
And God send you a happy new year.

The custom of wassailing  is over 600 years old.  The word has roots in Old English (I actually have a university credit in Old English, so useful). It meant "Be well".   Originally, the tradition was to pass a bowl of a spiced drink around the members of a household.  As each drank from the bowl, the assembly would wish the drinker the best of the season, "Waes Hael". 

I wonder who was the first mildly inebriated soul to say,"Let's go over and visit our neighbours and let them drink too!"  For, over time, the tradition changed and people went door to door spreading season's cheer.  (Go back to the blog on August 28th, Mummer Barbie and her Ugly Stick.)

When we were kids, my favourite thing to do was to go visit any of my mother's 10 siblings and their kids.  Sometimes, after we arrived at one house, we'd all decide to visit a third family group and if enough of us gathered, we sang.

My father always put on his uniform and went to the mess on New Year's Day for a levee.  This  tradition harks back to the seventeenth century and owes much to the fur traders.  They drank a concoction they called le sang du caribou.  The English changed the formula and called it moose milk.  

Final note, one version of the drink in the Wassail bowl was a mixture called lamb's wool.  It had little pieces of toast floating on top that (to someone's eyes) resembled lamb's wool and it left us with a new meaning for the word 'toast'.  

To your health!

Angels We have Heard on High Barbie

My father wasn't noted for his gift-giving acumen and my mother attached great importance to presents.  She loved to give gifts as much as she loved to receive them.   I still treasure many of the gifts she gave to me, and yet I cannot remember a single gift she gave to my dad.  I do remember some of the sparks that flew after she opened gifts he'd chosen for her.

One Christmas, he bought a pretty blue blouse.  I was with him when he got it and he was very pleased to have found it.  Mom wasn't pleased when she opened it.  "I have EXACTLY the same blouse hanging in my closet already," she fumed.  "Well", he said, "I knew it would look good on you."

There was the year he showed up with a dead plant.  "It was on sale."

One year he had her diamond engagement ring reset and bought a new wedding band to match.  That was an okay year.  I think she'd have been much happier with a brand new ring but he couldn't bring himself to buy her another ring.  It was a perfectly good diamond and she only had one ring finger.

Another year he bought her a bathroom hamper.  It was a very nice bathroom hamper.  It was a particularly bad gift.  

But then one year Mom unwrapped a beautiful mink coat.  It was soft and rich and lush and perfect.  And she felt like a precious angel every time she wore it.  Dad had finally managed to give her a gift that made her eyes pop out, just like my eyes did the year she gave me my first Barbie.

Deck the Halls Barbie

Deck the Halls Barbie

Decorating a Christmas tree correctly is a key component of a perfect Christmas.  It's okay for hotel and museum lobbies to have pink Christmas trees or trees wrapped in ribbon or even themed trees decorated with owls or cars or whatever.  But for the living room of your own home,  Barbie knows there is no messing with tradition. 

Once the tree was positioned to maximize its potential, we all watched as my father put the strings of lights in place.  When Barbie was young, lights were wired in sequence so the whole string went dark if one bulb burnt out.  Finding the defective bulb meant starting at one end of the string and screwing and unscrewing the bulbs until the string blinked on again. It was a real pain if two bulbs went out at the same time.

I have seen movies where as a final step the star or angel is ceremoniously placed on top of the tree by the youngest child.  Poppycock!  The star has to go on first, because all the electrical cords have to dangle down the back and all the plugs have to go into the power bar. You can't fool Barbie with that Hollywood pretense. This is the real world.

Next my mother was tasked with hanging the silver garland.  Its festoons were not just there to add glitter.  Draped properly the garland disguised any imperfections that weren't hidden against the wall. 

Now we kids were allowed to hang the ornaments, all those pretty glass balls and silver icicles. The most beautiful went near the top of the tree.  The plan was to protect them from the smallest fingers in the house but when the tree fell over (as it did once) those were the ornaments that broke because they had the longest trajectory.

Finally, the tinsel.  This was the part that caused the most strife.  We kids would toss handfuls of it at the tree while my mother repeated in vain, "One strand at a time, one strand at a time!" She liked talking to the wall, I guess.

O Tannenbaum Barbie

O Tannenbaum Barbie

Christmas trees must be from better stalk (ha, ha, get it?) than the ones we got when Barbie was young.  It was very exciting to go out in the car after dinner to the Christmas tree lot.  It was cold enough to see your breath and there was snow underfoot making that satisfying squeak.  The nice man would patiently hold and spin a few likely firs and we would pick one with not too many bald spots.  My mother never came on these excursions.  She waited at home for the intrepid shoppers to return with their catch.

My father would carry the tree into the living room and screw it into the stand.  The fire department always distributed brochures about keeping your tree fresh.  The suggestion was to immerse the bottom 4 inches of the trunk in water and to expect the tree to need a gallon of water a day.  Our Christmas tree stand had a shallow cup at the bottom that held less than a cup of water when empty.

Once the tree was in the living room,  Dad would hold it by the top branch and slowly rotate the whole tree with my mother assessing it critically.  The goal was to orient the tree so that it looked full to the point of opulence.  Every tree had a bald spot that had to be turned to face the corner, like  a naughty child.  One year the tree must have been very inadequate because I clearly remember my dad sawing off a bough and then drilling  a hole in the tree trunk.  The sawed-off limb was glued into the hole and voila, a beautiful Christmas tree (at least from the front).

Tree growers now spend their summers patiently shaping the trees while they grow.  Barbie just grabs one off the stack.  It is always perfect.

On the 1st Day of Christmas Barbie

On the 1st Day of Christmas Barbie

I wanted to see how a skirt with godets would look on Barbie.  It undulates and I keep thinking I should put a wire in it to better define the shape but then it might make Barbie dizzy.

Be that as it may, Barbie likes to sit in front of the tree with a crackling fire in the fireplace and watch the snow fall softly onto the quiet, moonlit street.  She also likes to open presents.  My mother loved opening presents.  She loved to fondle them, shake them, heft them and try to guess what was inside.
I flew home from university one Christmas with a suitcase full of gifts.  Mom was at the door to greet me when I arrived.  "Let me unpack your bag.  I'm sure you have laundry to do.  I'll start washing it now."

Nice try.  My mother hadn't done my laundry for me in years.  She just wanted to see her gift.  I caught her peering under my bed the next day.   "Vacuuming", she said.  "Snooping", I answered.

I was way ahead of her anyway.  All that week, in secret, she fondled a gift I'd wrapped for my brother.   A gift I'd wrapped for my brother, but with her name on it.

Poodle Skirt Barbie

Poodle Skirt Barbie

Connie Willis's excellent book Bellwether features a protagonist, Dr. Sandra Foster, a social scientist exploring the origins of fads.  Her discovery is that people are like a herd of  sheep led by a bellwether  who is "indistinguishable from the rest of the flock, only a little greedier, a little faster, a little hungrier, [a] little ahead of the flock."

Dr. Foster's research includes such fads as hair bobbing, Davy Crockett and hula hoops.  Clothing fashions are often faddish too.  Witness bell bottom pants, panier skirts, and poke bonnets, to name but three.  Barbie is by no means immune to fads. In fact, I'd say she is a bellwether.

A certain percentage of my wardrobe when I was young was comprised of hand-me-downs from my cousins.  There were some really nice clothes but no poodle skirt.  My parents didn't buy me one either but I did have a pair of very snazzy saddle shoes.  When I was 14, I bought go-go boots. 

My poor father had to take me to an eye doctor's appointment one rainy afternoon and I insisted on wearing them.  The smooth plastic soles were as slippery as Teflon, and Dad had to hold me up on every surface, wet leaves, sidewalk concrete, asphalt parking lot and linoleum floor.  He kept muttering something about teen-aged idiots. 

I wore my them in my class photo that year but since I'm standing in the second row with the other tall girls, my very stylish boots cannot be seen.  But doubt not, I looked great in them.