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| A couple of years ago I had the pleasure of living in London for almost a year. Now, London is a fascinating city for an American. It is both familiar...after all we speak a similiar language...and truly foreign...the language is completely deceptive.
Its foreignness There are many things about London to love...theatre, museums, shopping...but none so amazing as Christmas. It seems to me the most English of traditions. I admit to being heavily influenced by having viewed the English version of the movie “A Christmas Carol” with Alastair Sim nearly every year of my life from the time we got a TV set when I was six. “Oh the pudding...” and a cup of gin punch! Just the ticket to plant a romantic idea of the holiday in my brain. I had the great good fortune to live a mere scone’s throw away from the back door of Harrods and it soon became clear that the giant retail wonderland would set the tone for my Christmas experience. Shortly after we arrived in August, the garden shop right off the Pet Department and around the corner from Books and Magazines vanished overnight and was replaced by....The Christmas Shop. Now it is useful to understand that at the time London was in the midst of a drought and the temperatures were stiflingly and unpleasantly hot. (For the first four months we lived there it never rained a single drop). The blasts of cold air swooshing out the heavy doors of Harrods were particularly inviting especially after we emerged from the tube after a long day of overheated sightseeing. It was hard not to nip in and look around. Soon the Christmas Shop became one of our favorite stops on our daily summer tours of the premises. The wonders of the Christmas Shop were many. There were hundreds of ornaments, of course. Every imaginable color of shiny glass balls. Some were personalized with the Harrods imprimatur...one of Mr. Al Fayed’s favorite techniques for hooking the tourists. But there was also a wall of Christmas crackers and the ominously named “table bomb”. Now crackers (not saltines or Ritz, but innocently noisy toys for birthday parties and New Year’s Eve) at home tended to be pretty simple affairs,but some of the Harrods crackers cost a hundred pounds or more for a box of six and contained a variety of expensive little odds and ends. There were elaborate music boxes and a Santa suit of crimson velvet that bespoke a luxury that most US Santa suits can only dream of. There were garlands and stars to top the most majestic of trees. And it was all there at our fingertips. Eventually we came to specialize in collecting one particular kind of ornament starting with ...a perfectly lined up set of tiny dolls...Henry and his wives. Now given the difficult ends many of those women came to, I wondered at the appropriateness of hanging them on my tree at the festive season. But they were irresistible. Later I found a lovely set of Victoria and Albert...she before age and widowhood turned her into a little black fireplug and he...dressed smartly in his red uniform. Charming! As I began to hunt them down, others came into my hands...Shakespeare and Ann Hathaway and a little stuffed Globe theatre...Nelson with a cute little eyepatch... and a proud British ship in full sail. The stuffed, miniature symbols of the British monarchy included the Irish State coach and the footmen and guardsmen. St Paul’s Cathedral...Sherlock Holmes...the Welsh Dragon...the Lion Rampant all carefully rendered in cloth and embroidered with clever details. I had my tree delivered. I am really used to the process of hauling one home after a protracted debate over the merits of one tree or another. But I knew I wasn’t going to do that in a cab. So I ordered one complete with tiny stand delivered and set up by a pair of enterprising young men who explained that the type of tree most common in Britain requires almost no water. Indeed it stayed fresh for nearly a month and dropped almost no needles when I hauled it out in January. But to my eye it was a bit on the skinny side. English trees are not the fulsome models I am used to. They seem to be grown to resemble a fake tree and after careful examination of all the trees I saw, I realized they were all alike. No long needle...short needle... fat or skinny. They were all pretty much the same. Our Christmas was classic. We had a pudding ...not the butterscotch or chocolate of my youth but dense plum pudding which no amount of brandy sauce could actually make palatable. We went to Dickens’ house for a glass of gunpowder punch to honor the founder of the feast of our imagination. And my children, well past the normal age for such things, had their picture taken with Harrods’ elderly Santa. He was skinny and seemed a little startled to be flanked by two teenaged giggling American girls. Once decorated, our tree was lovely. It shone and sparkled and reflected the glories of the Empire. Best of all, it contained memories of every afternoon spent carefully considering the relative merits of this ornament or that garland and every place we visited to soak up the culture of the country. And when those decorations came home with us, they held those memories tightly to be unwrapped at every Christmas to follow.
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Melissa Blake Rowny is a member of Llamagraphics, Inc. Board of Directors.
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pops up at the oddest times. Call for a plumber and in walks a punk icon with spiky bleached hair, studs through lips, eyelids and nose and a menacing dog collar...a guy you would never let in your front door in the good old U.S. of A. Try to open a checking account only to be told the bank won’t bother for someone who may only live in London for a year. Don’t forget to pay for your television license...maybe a good idea... until you see what constitutes a morning show in Britain. 
