Repurposed Traditions: Christmas with @earthangelsstudios & @skippydoodledesigns

Traditions are kept by the certain magic of sharing them—whatever “they” might be—among family and friends. By imbuing a holiday with them, a collective memory of the annual event is passed along the generations in taste, color, song and story. Traditions evolve as they’re enjoyed in familiarity; the best nod to all that’s fresh among those that share in them, with something new added each year.

Story by Jen O’Connor | Folk Art by Sue Parker

MORE THAN ANY OTHER AMERICAN HOLIDAY, CHRISTMAS IS TETHERED TO CHILDHOOD through a web of memories. Many of our fondest recollections are fragranced with yuletide’s annual treats, those fancy cookies and lovely cakes that beg us still to indulge each season. Along with those home-baked confections, carols, and of course, gift-giving form the cornerstones of so many of our holiday traditions.

So, while the season simply wouldn’t be as fond in memory without the scents and tastes we know and adore, there’s another truly handmade tradition to note. Each year, amongst the platters of sugar cookies, eggnog and rum drenched tortes, chances are there’s something handmade that’s serving to set a mood as holiday décor, and has been used as such for some time!

It’s often these decorations that are touchstones in memory; they’re the handmade something that comes out of its box in basement or attic year after year to stand sentinel to the season, again and again. The object—whatever it is—becomes dearer as the years accumulate along with the patina of age.

You must know something like that… something you recall from Christmases past and still might see on your mother’s hutch, mantel or Christmas dinner table?

For me it was a small hand-carved wooden Santa I played with each Christmas as a little girl. He slid down a thin spring only for me to pull him up and drop him time and again with his sack of toys into a flocked paper chimney. He was special to me because I played with him year after year while he was out of his storage box and displayed on the coffee table. I adored that this tiny handmade decoration waited for me, much like I waited for Christmas each year, a child truly smitten with the season.

Most of us – even if it was a decade or two ago – have made some kind of holiday decoration and kept it out of sentiment. Or maybe what we treasured most was something handmade and given to us as a gift …something for the home or tree that reflects the season and its sparkle.

Indeed, crafting for the season was de rigueur in the earliest of modern Christmas celebrations. The idea of gifts or decorations being mass-produced and widely available is something that has come late to this largely handmade holiday, and seems to miss the festivity’s spirit.

As gift-giving emerged as a tradition in Germany, Austria, and soon after in England, the dark evenings of fall and early winter were spent making special treats by hand to gift loved ones. Early American celebrations followed these Western European ways, and small wooden trinkets, knitted things and hand-cut paper whimsies were all common gifts to present as tokens of love and friendship at the holidays. How perfectly wonderful to still share something handmade; a simple gift from the hands is a gift from the heart.

As folks reach to preserve and refresh the tradition of handmade and add to our own Christmas memories, nothing could be more fitting for the holiday than the freshly repurposed crafts from Skippy Doodle Designs of Columbia, Connecticut. Crafting maven and designer Sue Parker concocts the sweetest of holiday décor from castoffs and vintage loot. In her merry and able hands everything from recycled cigar boxes, forgotten tree-trimming paraphernalia and even tinsel fragments find new life on her one of a kind assemblages.

Indeed, her studio reflects the North Pole as she merrily combines textures and objects creating a crop of new holiday décor that simply suits the season’s folly and joy. Among her favorite techniques are marrying disparate castoffs in color to tell a new story. In her able hands and with a dose of festive imagination, an oddball 1950s paper house might meet up with a lonely reindeer and become something more fitting in a frenzy of mica-drenched snow. Likewise, a wayward elf finds a new home among vintage bottle-brush trees and wee tarnished bells. Her pieces each tell a story of Christmas past with a nod to the freshness of recycling and renewed crafting traditions.

Handmade things hold all the joy and sentiment with which they were created. Season after season they can be visually relished, and then tucked away to keep the good memories in store for the next holiday. So, if you don’t have something handmade around the house to help celebrate the holiday, consider the handmade spirit of the season and reach for something – or gift something -- that can become dearer as it holds the memories of each annual celebration.