By Kylie Klein-Nixon
I thought I had gone overboard with my Christmas decos this year, until I read about Harold Lloyd’s efforts.
Back in the 1920s, Lloyd was a silent movie superstar. Scenes of his slapstick derring-do in such films as Safety Last! (1923) and High and Dizzy (1920) have, along with Charlie Chaplin’s Little Tramp and Theda Bara’s smokey-eyed femme fatale, came to symbolise the entire era.
The highest-paid star of 1920, he indulged himself – as famous rich people will do – in a huge mansion (44-bedroom Green Acres) filled with everything his heart desired and what Lloyd’s heart desired was Christmas tree ornaments.
“Over the years, my grandfather had collected thousands of ornaments from all over the world,” Lloyd’s granddaughter, Suzanne. who grew up at Green Acres, would say years later.
“I remember a jewel encrusted ostrich egg and a sequined football. I particularly loved a Christmas ball given to him by his friend, makeup artist Wally Westmore, that was a miniature diorama depicting a bespectacled Harold in a red bathrobe trimming the tree.”
And those were just the standout pieces.
According to HaroldLloyd.com, the tree was so large and eye-popping it became a tourist attraction in its own right – there was even a postcard at one point. The collection was said to have included more than 8000 ornaments by the time he died in 1971, enough for three trees the same mammoth size.
Reinforced with steel rods and bamboo, it was actually several trees tied together, standing about 18 feet (6.1 metres) tall and 36 ft(19.3m) feet round.
According to the LA Times, by the 1950s the tree was said to be worth about US$25,000 (NZ$35,300), which by today’s measure is about $936,000 (NZ$1.32 million) – and that does not take into account the vintage value of the pieces on the tree.
According to the silent film appreciation blog, Silentology.com, the family would start putting the tree up in early November, in order to have it all up and ready to go for Christmas. It would stay up till March.
By the 1960s, when the tree was in full, gaudy bloom, the Lloyds started leaving it up year round.
People came from far and wide to be photographed with the tree. There is a picture of Dick Van Dyke posing in front of it from some time in the late 1960s.
Lloyd’s glorious ode of Christmas maximalism gives me a serious case of tree envy.
Like him, I am a fan of vintage, figural baubles, such as the kind sold by New York’s John Derianand the Mac Daddy of figural bauble, Christopher Radko.
Pure gaudy escapism, Lloyd’s over-burdened tree would not be out of place today, when so many of us started putting our trees up, à la chez Lloyd in November in an earnest bid to make a terrible year go a bit faster.
This year too, the quirky, ironic and even cheeky glass baubles were everywhere.
I finally got my dream bauble: a Christmas pickle. A silly US tradition, probably started, like Santa, as a marketing ploy; the idea is to hide the little glass pickle in the tree and the first one to spot it gets some chocolate.
From Typo’s bare-bottomed Santas, peanut butter jars and “Christmas pickles”, to Bed Bath and Table’s golden glass camels and much-coveted glittery rainbows, to Citta’s charmingly quirky Christmas pooches, these plastic-free decorations are future decor heirlooms.
They are so delicate and of the moment, they are bound to be popping up in far future Trade Me sales commanding crazy prices as pieces from Lloyd’s collection sometimes purportedly do.
But that is not why we buy them, is it? No. People like me, and my Christmas soul mate Ann Free, who has a collection of about 600 Christopher Radko baubles, buy them because they are just so adorably dinky.
And because there is something nostalgic, yet irreverent, about them that makes the usually staid, conservative and Victorian-ness of Christmas seem fresh.
Source: stuff.co