from “Classic Crafts and Recipes for the Holidays: Christmas with Martha Stewart Living”
This is the second in a multi-part series by our contributor Anonymous Bosch, a student on the west coast who won’t reveal any more details. Well, except these:
I like nothing more than spending a sunny afternoon on the beach with The Gospel according to Martha in my lap. You see, in my world, Martha Stewart is one of my gods, right along with David Remnick and Kathy Griffin. I like to think that Martha was put on Earth to decorate for all our domestic design sins.
After Vogue, Martha Stewart Living was my favorite magazine in my mother’s monthly cycle of subscriptions. Around the holidays, it became my third nipple, held close to my chest should quick reference be necessary to solve some housekeeping conundrum. One year when I was a teenager, inspired by the genius in that season’s MSL, I told my mother we were going to host the most spectacular New Year’s party ever. She nodded and said she wasn’t going to change up her annual routine, but if I wanted to update some elements of the evening I could go right ahead. She had no idea what kind of magic was about to be made.
A trip to the arts and crafts store downtown secured all the raw materials I would need to create my masterpiece. I trudged up the pathway and into our home with bags of golden paint, glues of every kind, boughs of holly, laurel, and fir. With my handy dandy glue gun fired up, I went to work.
The dining room was unrecognizable by the time I was finished with it. Above the mantle hung a laurel garland I had painted gold, leaf by leaf (tedious yes, but oh so fine), that visually invited guests into the space. Chestnuts were painted gold and formed into perfect spherical clusters that hung in each of the windows. Berries were turned into perfect bobeches, placed under the numerous candlesticks I had scattered about the room. And the piece de resistance: the Christmas tree. Towering at nine feet, it stood stately and elegant. The golden motif was breathtaking. Rivers of gilded satin ribbon flowed down from the top to the bottom. We were ready to ring in the New Year in the style of the Astors — no, the Bourbons!
Coming home from her evening yoga class, my mother walked into the dining room and gasped. Wide-eyed, she embraced me and exclaimed, “This is one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen!” My father was also impressed, and just used it as an opportunity to poke fun at my mother, a loyal Martha reader herself, for being outdone by a mere kid. I knew Martha would have been proud. It was one of the most stereotypically queer things I could have done. And of course, no one suspected a thing.
