The art, madness and history of holiday centerpieces

November 22, 2017 7:07 AM

As holiday festivities ramp up, you might be wondering "how should I decorate this table? Why should I decorate this table?" To answer both questions, Curbed continues its Period Dramas series with How Christmas decorations evolved through the 1800s in New England. For another look at (New England) Christmas Past, here's Christmas: Williamsburg Style. But wait, you say, let's tackle one holiday at a time. OK, here's the origin of the Thanksgiving cornucopia, and more on the cornucopia in general. If you want a more beachy theme, here's Secret Life of Antiques: Victorian Shell Work. And if you combine all that, you can get a festive garbage clam, just like Ivanka Trump. Holiday centerpiece problem solved!
posted by filthy light thief (24 comments total)

I will never understand why anyone would put anything on a Thanksgiving table other than food or necessary accessories for eating food. That's valuable food-related space going to waste.
posted by Faint of Butt at 7:12 AM on November 22, 2017 [5 favorites]

obligatory decorative gourd season appreciation.
posted by Mchelly at 7:27 AM on November 22, 2017 [7 favorites]

I don't know why anybody needs to worry about table decorations after Ivanka showed us the way.
posted by nubs at 7:31 AM on November 22, 2017

A few years ago I got to decorate a historic house for Christmas tours. We did a tabletop feather tree with an element that has been almost forgotten: a "Christmas fence" around it, with little animals in it. This is related to the German putz, the original "Christmas Village," and you can find the fences on eBay and the like. People thought it was charming as all heck.
posted by Miko at 7:32 AM on November 22, 2017 [1 favorite]

DIY bread cornucopia that looks far easier than it probably is.
posted by Mchelly at 7:36 AM on November 22, 2017 [1 favorite]

yeah who are all these people who have space on the table for a centerpiece you clearly aren’t feeding your guests enough
posted by skycrashesdown at 7:37 AM on November 22, 2017 [2 favorites]

I remember being made to make holiday centerpieces in school every year, knowing in my heart that my parents wouldn't use them but letting myself get my hopes up like a sap. Not even on the sideboard with the pies.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 7:42 AM on November 22, 2017

"And if you combine all that, you can get a festive garbage clam, just like Ivanka Trump." wait - what's who's the object and subject of that sentence? ISWYDT
posted by cyclotronboy at 7:47 AM on November 22, 2017 [11 favorites]

My friend made cool centerpieces by combining plastic pink flamingo heads with plastic reindeer. He called them flamingdeer. Folks liked them.
posted by bz at 8:05 AM on November 22, 2017 [3 favorites]

yeah who are all these people who have space on the table for a centerpiece

There's a long history to table display, but I think it became more of a thing when the idea of a buffet luncheon or dinner started to take off in the 1920s-30s as a new trend. Instead of putting all the dishes out family style and passing them around, or in wealthier households having someone pass or plate the dishes for you, people put the food on a separate surface and brought their plates back to the tables. That left a gap in the middle of the table.

I do hold that once you hit more than 8 people, you're better off going buffet, especially at a multipart meal like Thanksgiving, because otherwise you're forever passing and shuffling and shifting dishes around instead of, you know, eating. So that leaves some room on the table.
posted by Miko at 8:33 AM on November 22, 2017

I always love seeing photos of elaborate table settings and centerpieces, but even when we put just a simple vase of flowers on the table, it's only there for about 5 minutes before inevitably being moved somewhere to make room for food and/or so people can see each other over it. And it's usually easier and prettier to assemble appetizers on plates and serve them than to set the table with both plates and then have to pass around all the components (let alone putting out chargers, which are pretty under plates but I think aren't actually supposed to go there?)

I can't imagine having to clear a giant clamshell filled with stuff to make room for the actual food. But I wouldn't have space to put it anywhere but on the table.

On the other hand, I could get a lot more into it if it played a more central role, like a seder plate does on Passover. At this point in the meal all people look toward the cornucopia and nod at the inner produce, without speaking, while the leader holds aloft a representative mango and chants...
posted by Mchelly at 8:47 AM on November 22, 2017

My MIL was sorely offended by the pizza skull video my mom posted on my timeline (which she could only see because MY mom hasn’t figured out how to block without defriending) so I was really, REALLY tempted to do a giant pizza skull tablescape this year. Because fuck her, that’s why.
posted by bitter-girl.com at 8:51 AM on November 22, 2017 [6 favorites]

Check out @CenterpieceBot on Twitter.
posted by matildaben at 8:56 AM on November 22, 2017 [1 favorite]

As Mefi's Own Ocean Spray rep (at least I'm the only one so far as I know!), I would like to alert you all to Ocean Spray's own interactive, how-to-Thanksgiving web site, which covers decor and leftovers as well as food. And you will be pleased to note that their centerpiece is really butt-easy - it's just a matter of placing some Festive Objects on a platter. Easy to DIY, takes up less space and you don't need to worry about it upstaging the food. (I will grant that the fancy-ass twee skirts-for-candles is a little more fussy, though, but you can just skip that.)

Place cards is always a thing too - I like to think that what most people do is that there's one year where the family asks the grade school kids to make the place cards, and then they save and re-use them every year because come on, how cute is that?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:04 AM on November 22, 2017

I want to hear more about the person who takes offense at pizza skulls. (Which, I might add, combine two of my favorite things.)
posted by Faint of Butt at 9:05 AM on November 22, 2017 [2 favorites]

Some twitter users found Ivanka's clam inspiring.
posted by adept256 at 11:39 AM on November 22, 2017 [1 favorite]

It certainly inspired my new name for her.
posted by Space Kitty at 12:58 PM on November 22, 2017 [1 favorite]

I want to hear more about the person who takes offense at pizza skulls. (Which, I might add, combine two of my favorite things.)

Some people find the amusingly macabre unfit for holiday celebrations other than Halloween, which is sad, because it meant we ended up with many unused Christmas Cards a few years back when my mom didn't like that my wife and I opted to use our zombie-fied Halloween photo in the family Christmas Card. Sorry Mom, we didn't have many photos of us as a couple that year, and you did ask me to make the card that year (and every year since, TBH -- but I've been good, and haven't strayed into "holiday in-appropriate" territory since the year I made her cry because of our Christmas card).
posted by filthy light thief at 2:30 PM on November 22, 2017 [5 favorites]

"And if you combine all that, you can get a festive garbage clam, just like Ivanka Trump." wait - what's who's the object and subject of that sentence? ISWYDT

Oh, huh. That totally wasn't my intention, but I'll now take credit for that whimsical lack of clarity.
posted by filthy light thief at 2:32 PM on November 22, 2017 [2 favorites]

Metafilter: festive garbage clam. #festivegarbageclam
posted by cyclotronboy at 6:55 AM on November 23, 2017 [1 favorite]

I'm still hung up on this: what is an Ocean Spray rep and how do you get to be one?
posted by Miko at 7:17 PM on November 25, 2017

Heh; the "Ocean Spray Rep" was more me claiming some unofficial cred. The actual reality is that the Ocean Spray company has a co-op business model, where instead of there being one big Ocean Spray Farm (TM) somewhere, they have a deal with a few hundred family farms scattered across Massachusetts, Wisconsin, New Jersey, Oregon and a few other states; the farms sell their berries exclusively to Ocean Spray in exchange for being an equal shareholder in the company along with all the other farmers; and, the farmers are the only shareholders. There's a processing plant and there's a guy who's the head of the company, but those farmers are the ones who call all the shots for the business.

My family has one of the farms and has been operating it for about 3 generations now; my great-grandfather started it during his retirement, and ever since it's been the "something to keep us busy and supplement the retirement income" project for each subsequent generation, with one sibling/cousin whatever usually stepping up to be more hands-on and oversee things. My parents are taking that on now, and I suspect my brother and one of my cousins will be the next-generation hands-on guys. (Me, I'm content to suggest the occasional recipe.)

So my parents get the shareholders'/farmers' newsletters and they passed the Thanksgiving one on to the rest of us this year on a whim, and I shared it with MeFi. Otherwise all the Ocean Spray connection gives me is bragging rights and some free cranberries every year (Mom saves aside a bushel or two of the berries before they ship the rest to Ocean Spray, and I always get a couple big ziploc baggies full).
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:04 PM on November 25, 2017 [1 favorite]

Well, that's wonderful. Thanks for explaining. How cool to have a family cranberry farm.

But yeah, if there were like a little training you could take to become a cranberry rep and offer helpful cranberry tips at opportune moments in regular life (which is the thing I imagined when you said it) I would totally do it!
posted by Miko at 7:04 AM on November 26, 2017

Looping you right back around to the OceanSpray web site! :-)
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 3:38 PM on November 26, 2017