WREATHS AND DOOR ORNAMENTS - DAY 2

“The prettiest sight to see is the holly that will be on your own front door,” wrote Meredith Willson. (“It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas”)

Vance at the piano

My dad, Vance Dobson, created outdoor decorations for our family home in town using evergreen boughs and lights. None of these store-bought manufactured decorations for him. Eventually he even had special wreath forms made so that he didn’t have to “reinvent the wheel” every year. In the mid-1980s (the last years of his adventure in this world), he lamented that boughs were no longer available, which my neighbor, also a decorator in evergreens, confirmed.

In the 1930s, my dad sent greenery home to the farm from the Washington coast where he lived. Visiting at the farm during Christmas 1936, his sister Ethel wrote: “Your beautiful box came on Dec. 26^th so we still had Christmas, but I almost wept when I saw the lovely tapers, silver table ornament and luscious holly! Those were the most beautiful holly I’ve ever seen, it seems to me – so full of berries, and how beautifully your blue boxes looked in among the silver sprays. It was a veritable treasure chest.”

Back in the day, Daddy would make a door swag for our house, but when he was gone, I continued the tradition of a fresh wreath for our door as a holiday splurge. When I started, they cost around $15.00. This year at Albertsons, the fresh wreaths are $32.99! Too much!  

I made a nice batch of snickerdoodles today. KW