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What will be on your Christmas table?

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What will be on your Christmas table?

Postby Sloe-Gin » Tue Oct 26, 2021 8:34 pm

Not the food, but the tableware.
It's a tradition that we use my grandparents' plates and tureens (family laugh at that term).
I serve gravy in gravy boats (not a jug. Mother?)
Cranberry and bread sauce will be in lidded pots.

Oh and candles!

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Re: What will be on your Christmas table?

Postby herbidacious » Tue Oct 26, 2021 8:47 pm

It's a bit sad that I have got to 54 and still not been able to establish a Christmas table tradition - I have, except for a very few years, had to go to parents' houses for Christmas. I do have a jug with holly on it which my mother bought me :?

Will have crackers and tea lights at my mother's (so glad we bought the fold up round table!) and I have some nice Thornback & Peel robin napkins.

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Re: What will be on your Christmas table?

Postby Pepper Pig » Tue Oct 26, 2021 9:08 pm

With 22 of us one table is not an option. We’ve always had more diners than table space other than the couple of last years when it was just me and him.
We eat on our laps in front of the TV unless DS1 can squash ua in. OH won’t have a clue that it’s Christmas so it’s not a problem.

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Re: What will be on your Christmas table?

Postby Stokey Sue » Tue Oct 26, 2021 9:49 pm

Apart from when it was just me and OH I’ve never had enough table space to put decorations on the table or worry too much about the serving dishes, either like Herbi “doing” Christmas for aged parents on a small gate leg table or for a larger group with no elbow room

So it’s a Christmas tablecloth (never thought I wanted one, then I was given one and :idea: didn’t need to put purely decorative things on the table as well) or a beautiful black white and red one I brought back from Slovenia in 1970

If there’s room I will put candles on the table, nice crackers which are actually decorative (TK Maxx is often a good place to find those if you don’t have any yet) and I did manage to find some nice paper napkins that go with the Christmas tablecloth, the Slovenian one has matching napkins.

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Re: What will be on your Christmas table?

Postby Busybee » Tue Oct 26, 2021 10:47 pm

A Christmas table cloth, our full wedgewood wedding dinner service which includes gravy boat and tureens, the wedding canteen of cutlery, wedding present crystal glasses and flutes and candles.

Christmas and Easter are about the only times that I use the cutlery and dinner service, a shame but it’s much more work as none of it goes through the dishwasher.

It does all look good but I find that I’m anxious using it all, what if I break some of it? I’m not even sure that the patterns etc are still in production.

BB

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Re: What will be on your Christmas table?

Postby Stokey Sue » Tue Oct 26, 2021 11:06 pm

China search and similar can usually supply odd pieces, I had to top up my Wedgwood

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Re: What will be on your Christmas table?

Postby WWordsworth » Tue Oct 26, 2021 11:12 pm

Don't know what's happening this year, but last Christmas it was just us, at the breakfast bar, with seafood, champagne and candles.
It was lovely.

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Re: What will be on your Christmas table?

Postby Earthmaiden » Tue Oct 26, 2021 11:41 pm

My table isn't big enough for decorations as well as everything else. I bring in another table usually stored in the shed to use as a side table (suitably covered) and dishes are passed from there with just gravy etc on the table. I find that once there are crackers, glasses, napkins etc - and people - it all seems quite festive. I do sometimes use a paper Christmas tablecloth since having children/grandchild. I remember the first time I went to MILs for Christmas circa 1973 and she had a plastic Christmas tablecloth. I was horrified and still wouldn't have one even if they are sensible. I gave my best dinner service away. Things are more informal now. I just use white china and an assortment of serving dishes and white gravy boat. My cutlery is stainless steel but I do like to use family silver serving spoons etc.

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Re: What will be on your Christmas table?

Postby Stokey Sue » Wed Oct 27, 2021 12:46 am

My Christmas tablecloth is textile - I’ve no idea what kind, label went south some time late last century, but it washes like a dream

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Re: What will be on your Christmas table?

Postby Kacey » Wed Oct 27, 2021 7:29 am

My table wouldn't grace the pages of a magazine as I have too many precious non-matching items that I love - and its only the two of us.

I have my ex-husbands grandma's hand embroidered Christmas table cloth, a plain white cloth with holly leaves and berries embroidered all around the edges, a set of red and green tartan napkins I bought from House of Fraser about 30 odd years ago when H of F was posh, they were flipping expensive at the time but I loved them.

All my crockery is white these days, easier to mix a hotchpotch of styles gathered over the years. I do have a full dinner service of this
https://www.etsy.com/ie/listing/5797290 ... ner-plates but its currently stored at my Moms, along with a lot of vintage odds and ends of crockery. One of these days I'll go and get it all back.

I have a large gold coloured bowl that usually makes up my centrepiece, I fill it with greenery, pine cones, some fancy red and green glass baubles, fresh cinnamon sticks etc. This year I might add a small string of lights.

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Re: What will be on your Christmas table?

Postby herbidacious » Wed Oct 27, 2021 11:15 am

Oh I forgot, I do have a vaguely Christmassy tablecloth. Well it's cream with red (berries?) on it.

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Re: What will be on your Christmas table?

Postby Suffs » Wed Oct 27, 2021 11:57 am

We have a table cloth that was given to us specifically as a Christmas table cloth along with matching napkins .. it's gold damask ... I'm just not a gold damask sort of a girl ... I prefer my white linen cloth with an embroidered red runner, or a very colourful Russian tablecloth with a traditional printed pattern, and the red linen napkins go with either.

We'll have great granny's very elderly silver cutlery and our newish plain white porcelain plates, but I've collected some serving dishes, sauce boats etc of assorted colours which look great on the table together ... a sort of 'Harlequin set ... and Waterford crystal glasses .... on Christmas Eve I'll assemble a little centrepiece of gilded ivy etc from the garden around a candle (the candle won't be lit because candles make OH cough) ... we won't have crackers .... good ones are so expensive and cheap ones are just plastic, unrecycleable plastecised paper and tatt .. but I'm thinking of making my own 'party hats' and having some silly jokes written out to share ... if I get a round tuit :lol:

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Re: What will be on your Christmas table?

Postby Uschi » Wed Oct 27, 2021 12:08 pm

Now that I live with Axel space is an issue. When I had more room, I loved decorating the table with things like a planted up Bundt tin, and quaint mocha and coffee cups on saucers as candles (I poured wax into them, having suspended a length of cotton yarn into them from a pencil for a wick. This always looked very festive.

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Re: What will be on your Christmas table?

Postby KeenCook2 » Wed Oct 27, 2021 12:41 pm

We have a red, plasticized tablecloth that we bought at a French Christmas fair in Chiswick Town Hall about 20 years ago. Before that we used to have the John Lewis plasticized bright red with gold stars fabric, cut to size.
When there's space, usually on Christmas mornng, as in the pic, we have our East German candle merry go round we were given by an au pair 25 or 30 years ago.
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Re: What will be on your Christmas table?

Postby Earthmaiden » Wed Oct 27, 2021 1:00 pm

Very different to MIL's plastic cloth, KC2 :lol:.

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Re: What will be on your Christmas table?

Postby Uschi » Wed Oct 27, 2021 1:42 pm

Aaah, eine Weihnachtspyramide. My #ast German relatives used to hunt high and low to get their hands on one for us. They were/are produced in the South-Eastern corner of Germany, but most went to West Germany for hard currency and were sold quite dearly here. These days most come from China. :lol:

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Re: What will be on your Christmas table?

Postby KeenCook2 » Wed Oct 27, 2021 1:45 pm

That particular au pair came from Fuerstenwalde (sorry, haven't worked out the umlauts on my laptop!)

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Re: What will be on your Christmas table?

Postby Suffs » Wed Oct 27, 2021 1:54 pm

That's lovely ... my MIL has one of those candle merry go rounds given to her and late FIL by their East German penfriends hears and years ago ... it comes out every Christmas and sits in the inglenook fireplace with it's candles flickering and the blades turning ... Christmas there wouldn't be Christmas without it. 8-)

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Re: What will be on your Christmas table?

Postby Uschi » Wed Oct 27, 2021 2:06 pm

My relatives come from the Western Border, Göttingen being closer to them than any other bigger town in East Germany, say Mühlhausen. It was so close to the border that it was off-limits to us and even most East Germans,

I have never been as far East as Fürstenwalde. I ought to visit the area, but it is not on the cards now.

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Re: What will be on your Christmas table?

Postby Wic » Wed Oct 27, 2021 3:48 pm

We have one that we got when we lived in Germany more years ago than I remember. I just love it, but storing it over the rest of the year is tricky. It’s three layers high, plus the windmill.

I always manage to put the blades into the windmill the wrong way first, so everything careers round backwards before I get it right.

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