Oh, Christmas Tree . . .

A number of readers have asked me to post photographs of our decorated Christmas tree at Darlington House.  I am more than happy to oblige, thank you.  I'd been planning on posting pictures of it all along, but I hadn't done so as we only put it up several days ago.  We are not one of those households that immediately gets into the Christmas spirit the day after Thanksgiving.  It takes time for the spirit to build with us.  We usually wait until mid-December, at the earliest, to put up our tree.

This year, we (or should I say Boy, since he is the one solely responsible for decorating the Christmas tree in our house) put up and decorated a pale green, old-fashioned feather tree on one of the serving tables in our dining room.  We bought the tree last week at Treillage, in Manhattan.  I think it is one of the loveliest Christmas trees that Boy has ever done.  And that's saying a lot.

This is the first Christmas that we've not had a "real" tree.  Even though I have an inborn prejudice against artificial trees, I love feather trees, because they are—in part—meant to look artificial; they're not trying to fool anyone that they are a living tree.

Boy has hung the tree with a combination of vintage and new-ish gold, green, silver, and orange ornaments that we've collected over the years.  And, as I described in my recent post I'm Just Wild About Slim, he's also decorated it with dried slices of oranges, a gift to us from fellow blogger Slim Paley.

Boy anchored the tree in a vintage silver-plated ice bucket from one of the great (and long gone) grand hotels.  He has surrounded it with a forest of miniature bottle-brush trees that we bought years ago from the late lamented Martha By Mail, placed on little silver beakers and footed bowls atop a snowy-white linen runner.

It's really rather pretty, don't you think?

Photographs by Boy Fenwick