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Holiday Greening
Written By: Deena Bouknight | Issue: 2021/12 – December
You open your home to an entire suite of sensual delights when you invite Nature into your Holiday decorating plans.
Before there were plastic blowups, flashing lights, and twirling plug-ins, December decorating was au naturale.
And some (me included) still prefer it that way.
A favorite tradition of a log church just outside of Asheville is to gather the congregation on a Saturday in December with the one mandate: Bring greenery from your gardens and yards and forests. What results is the “greening of the church” with fragrant garlands and swags. The following Sunday morning presents a sensual experience ushering in the season in a way that only nature can accomplish.
That sacred family, the one that launched the “Reason for the Season,” smelled only livestock dung and dirt in that ancient makeshift birthing room (i.e. stable).
But we have the opportunity to inhale the woodsy fragrance of a Frasier fir, grown lovingly somewhere in the Western North Carolina mountains. Or, we might decide to trod upon our own property and scout out a more willowy, subtly fragrant cedar for decorating with smell-good strings of dried fruit, potpourri, and popcorn.
With the Christmas tree as the centerpiece, a natural holiday décor can be achieved with clippings from common Plateau plants: holly trees, mountain laurels, rhododendrons, and anything growing that is evergreen. Use a wreath form and prune and poke and arrange clippings to form a door or gate decoration. Pull out every usable container and fill them with water and stuff them with the plucked bounties; the aromatic arrangements decorate mantels, tabletops, dining tables, and more.
Make garland or a sash with long-bough, fresh-cut clippings of a wispy cedar or white pine, for example, by attaching limb to limb with floral wire (for garland) and the stem ends upside down (for a sash).
Add bows if desired – or just stick purely to an outdoorsy ambiance throughout the home’s interior.
Natural greenery may have to be replenished mid-season, but the payoff is a beautiful, scent-filled home that beats artificial any day.
