Many years ago I had a very large apartment and it was perfect for throwing parties. One year I decided to have a Christmas party. I billed it as a tree trimming party but the idea was, bring an ornament, and hang out, eat, drink, chat, and have fun. But I decided it might be useful for the socially challenged to have some less social-skill-demanding activities, so I set aside the dining room table, and 6 chairs, for folks to make christmas tree decorations if they felt like it. No big deal.
Well much to my amazement, those 6 chairs became the focus of the evening. People I normally thought of as calm reserved mature adults were sitting there– for hours– totally engrossed in fumbling with blunt school scissors, white paste, construction paper, and glitter. There was a waiting list created for each seat. People were distracted in talking to me for fear they might lose their place in line. Food and drink had to be brought to those at the table for they refused to get up.
In one of the seats there was a conglomeration of an architect, an interior decorator, and 2 helpers working ALL NIGHT on a single ornament: it was a little house, only about 3 inches wide and high, complete with an internal diorama, snow on the roof made from aspirin bottle cotton, with aluminum foil icicles and skis on the side of the house. Another team of people worked for 3 hours straight creating a santa doll. And someone else had a santa’s mailbox, complete with letters to santa enclosed in tiny envelopes, and a flag, with stamps.
Many people introduced others at the party to arts and crafts traditions they had grown up with– for example, we had quite a few people making little gingerbread men from yarn and crepe paper. The star on the tree was created with a cardboard cutout of a star covered in shiny aluminum foil, mounted via an inverted dixie cup stapled to the back.
Well you don’t have to hit me in the head with a ball bat more than once. I got the message. The next few years I provided tons of material from craft shops, and 2 tables with as many chairs as I could muster, and you never saw a bigger beehive of santa’s workshop activity. I still have many of the ornaments. I admit, there was a lot of junk, but some of what these folks created was just spectacular. I think my favorite is a lace snowflake made by a woman of italian descent. Every year I take it out and see both a little piece of Burano lacemaking tradition and a memory of a friend and a fabulous party.
Of course time marches on and bit by bit my friends started to get married and have kids, and folks started bringing their kids to the party. Sad to say, once the kids took over the crafts table, the adults all held back and did not let their creativity flow any more, as the demands of “being the adult” quickly repressed that energy. I couldn’t get rid of the kids, so I just stopped having the parties. But I know that that cutting/trimming/pasting imagination is still there in everyone, if you just create the right circumstances for it to be released.
Happy Holidays – jl
