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A Christmas Wedding
HE first girl lived in a country town and evergreens in the woods near by were plentiful. The wedding was a Christmas one, and took place in the late afternoon. Garlands of graceful ground pine were wound over the banisters in the hall, and draped over the doorways to hang down halfway on each side against the ivory white woodwork. In the living-room, two little Christmas trees, lighted with tiny white candles, formed an alcove where the bridal group could stand.
The table in the dining-room was decorated for a buffet luncheon in holiday red and green.
There was a centerpiece of red roses, red silk candle shades shading white candles in clear glass candlesticks, and tiny green Christmas ferns scattered on the white cloth. [162] The menu had the same color harmony, and consisted of consommé, salted crackers, oyster patties, chicken jelly salad with green mayonnaise, salad rolls, olives, pistachio ice-cream in holly-decked cases, little cakes with green icing and silver bonbons stuck on top, and coffee, with green mints.
This is an account of one wedding, not a set of instructions. What a modern reader needs is a translation, because almost every item on both lists — the decorations and the menu — has either changed meaning or disappeared.
- Ground pineThe garlands are ground pine, a low creeping evergreen gathered out of the woods near the house rather than bought. Most of the greenery in this book is of that kind: free, local, and cut the morning of the party. The same effect now comes by the metre from a florist.
- Chicken jelly saladNot a dessert jelly. Cooked chicken set in a savoury aspic made from its own stock, turned out and sliced onto lettuce. Green mayonnaise is mayonnaise coloured and flavoured with pounded herbs or spinach. Both were standard cold-buffet work and both have gone out of use entirely.
- Oyster pattiesSmall puff-pastry cases filled with oysters in a cream sauce and served hot. Oysters were a common and inexpensive filling in American cooking of this kind, which is the reverse of the position they hold now.
- Lit candles in a Christmas treeThe alcove the couple stood in was made of two small trees carrying lit white candles, indoors, beside cut greenery and a wedding dress. It is worth saying plainly that nobody should copy this. The book describes it as charming and has nothing else to say about it.
- Candle shadesRed silk shades over white candles in clear glass sticks: small fabric cones that sat above the flame to tint the light. They were an ordinary table item then and are a curiosity now, and like the trees they put cloth above a naked wick.
- A buffet luncheon in the afternoonThe ceremony is late afternoon and the food is called a buffet luncheon: guests standing, nothing hot but the consommé and the patties, and nothing that needed a seated table. The form is a good deal lighter than a modern reception.
Almost everything at this wedding was made rather than bought. The greenery came out of the woods, the trees were dressed at home, the ice-cream was moulded into cases trimmed with holly, and the little cakes were iced green with silver bonbons set on by hand. One instruction runs through the whole account and it is not about food: everything is red and green, and the menu was chosen to match the candle shades. That is the method of this entire book. A party is a colour scheme carried through the decoration, the favours, the place-cards and the plate, and the hostess is its art director. The scale is worth noticing too. This wedding happens in a hall, a living room and a dining room — a family’s own house, holding as many people as it would hold, with the bride’s friends doing the work.