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A Christmas Tree Shower
OR the bride who announces her engage- FOR ment in December, a Christmas tree shower might be given Christmas week.
Send out cards of invitation in the shape of small Christmas trees, or else paste or paint little evergreen trees on white cards. Ask the guests to bring something small enough to be hung on a little Christmas tree. The bride should be asked to come a little later than the others, so that they may have time to hang their gifts on the tree.
The tree may be as elaborate as you wish to make it. Where trees are hard to procure, a cunning little one on a table is quite large enough. It can be decked with gold and silver hearts and candy kisses, and on its branches should hang the shower gifts, prettily wrapped and tied.
When the bride arrives, she must strip the tree. Among its treasures may be Eng- [134] lish walnut shells, gilded and tied together, with fortune verses inside. The hostess provides one of these for each guest. The refreshments may consist of sandwiches cut in the shape of Christmas trees and filled with green pepper and cream cheese; caraway cookies cut in the shape of Christmas trees; and hot chocolate, with a sprig of evergreen tied by a tiny bow of red to each cup-handle.
This affair could be planned specifically as a handkerchief, hosiery or kitchen shower. [135] WEDDINGS FOLLOWING naturally on the engagement announcement and bridal showers come the wedding plans.
If the bride's house is small, a church wedding may be the solution for her, or else she may plan a house wedding with just a few chosen friends and relatives present.
Very often, if a church wedding is planned, there is a reception afterward at the bride's home. If only a few guests are invited to it, a wedding breakfast or dinner may be served, but if a large number of people are asked, buffet refreshments are sufficient.
According to the different seasons of the year, the weddings may take on varying characters. Spring, summer, fall and winter weddings, indoor and outdoor weddings, all have their own special charms. [139]
A bridal shower held in Christmas week, with a small tree used as the delivery mechanism for the gifts. Most of this still works, and one part of the page is not part of the party at all.
- What a shower wasA party at which guests bring small presents for a woman about to be married. The gifts were often restricted to one category, and the page suggests handkerchiefs, hosiery or kitchen goods. It is the ancestor of the modern registry, run by the hostess rather than by the couple.
- The staging is the designThe bride is asked to arrive later than everyone else so the guests can hang their parcels on the tree first, and she then strips it. That piece of timing is what makes the party, and it needs no updating.
- Pepper and cream cheese sandwichesCream cheese beaten soft with very finely chopped green pepper, on white bread, cut with a tree-shaped cutter. Make the filling an hour ahead and drain it, or the pepper’s water soaks the bread, and press the sandwiches under a board before cutting.
- Walnut-shell fortunesSplit English walnuts cleanly at the seam with a knife point, empty them, put a written verse inside, gild the outside and tie the halves back together with thread. The hostess made one for each guest. It is an evening’s work and the prettiest thing on the page.
- The page runs on past the partyEverything after “a handkerchief, hosiery or kitchen shower” belongs to the next chapter, on weddings. The paragraphs about church weddings and buffet refreshments are not part of the Christmas tree shower and were never meant to be read as part of it.
Look at what the gifts were for. Handkerchiefs, stockings, kitchen goods: a young woman setting up a household needed small durable things in quantity and could not buy them all at once, and the shower was the machinery for supplying them without her having to ask. The form is generous and faintly managerial at the same time. The hostess fixes the category, the guests comply, and the bride is kept out of the room until it has all been arranged.