Your Xmas Table

Waikato Times, Volume 118, Issue 19762, 18 December 1935, Page 19 (Supplement)

Your Xmas Table

Make It a Festival One.

(By Felicity.) Will your Christmas table this year be a pleasure to look at as well as to tempt one’s palate? It means such a great deal to provide the dinner of the, year with a fitting setting. Last year I had the privilege of spending Christmas with friends and it was a very pleasant one indeed, but there was just one tiny fault that marred the perfection of the carefully planned and perfectly cooked dinner. My hostess had been so busy with the menu she had forgotten to spare five minutes for the table. The result was like sending an immaculately groomed little daughter to a party and forgetting to change her workaday frock. We went in to the airy dining room which was as neat as a new pin and moved over to the table to take our places. There was the table positively weighed down with good things and yet something seemed lacking. And then I found it. The silver was dull so that the snowy crispness of the lovely tablecloth was lost, and the centre of the table was lamentably bare. A clean little girl but no party frock! The Final Touch. If you are very busy indeed you will find that the kiddies will find helping to make the silver shine for Christmas a fascinatinggame, and a penny for icecream will sometimes add an* even greater . polish and do no great harm. Save your choicest flowers from your garden and choose your loveliest bowl (it need not be a cumbersome one that will take up too much room and tip over if touched accidentally) for your centrepiece and spend five minutes extra seeing everything is in place. You will see a snowy cloth, shining silver and glassware and a lovely centrepiece make a fitting setting for your masterpiece of culinary art. If you can find a few extra pennies in a purse made slender by Christmas demands, you will find that a few inexpensive Christmas crackers will give the final festival touch. ' Another delightful Christmas dinner I had was with another friend of mine who is both practical and artistic. On 1 Christmas morning when the temperature promised to rise to an alarming degree she said firmly: “Of course this plum pudding and all the family about the table in the familyv dining-room is all right when the weather is moderate, but to-day I am afraid it will have to go by the board.” So she called in Father and two very willing small sons and being the fortunate possessor of a smooth lawn and some lovely trees the Christmas dinner was a huge success. In place of coffee she substituted iced drinks and as an option to heavy Christmas pudding, strawberries and cream. _ The pudding was very popular in the evening when the temperature "had fallen and the tradition was thus fulfilled.