Photograph by George Sakkestad
Carole Reames loves decorating her Christmas trees--all 11 of them.
By Suzanne Cristallo
'Did you find your moons yet?" a friend asks. She is referring to three, 18-inch-long celestial bodies. They were designed to be the focal points on the latest addition to the forest of trees Los Gatan Carole Reames erects in her living room every Christmas. No, she had not, and it was cause for repeated trips to the hinterlands of her house--a 50-foot-long attic space under the eaves of the third story, a place devoted solely to the storage of holiday decorations. "Some place is hiding my moons," Reames laments.
Every year for the past seven, she has spent the better part of three weeks preparing for Christmas in a way that would make most able-bodied people faint. To date she has 11 trees, each with a different theme born from an idea collected at some point in her life.
Four of the trees are live and over 8 feet tall. The rest are four- and five-footers or tabletop size.
The yearly routine involves finding the right trees, hauling them home, erecting them with fishing line attached to the wall to strengthen their stance and finally decorating them.
Reames makes at least 50 trips up and down two flights of stairs to bring down the boxes and bags full of accumulated Christmas treasures.
"With all of the other things going on around here, it takes at least two weeks to get the trees decorated," she says, "and I'm still not through by Christmas."
Two weeks before Christmas, she was halfway through. One of her largest trees, the moon tree, stood ready to welcome visitors.
The moon tree commands the attention of anyone entering through the front door. Its fragrant fir branches reach halfway across the entrance hall and brush the door as it stands ajar. Gold moons, some grinning roundly, others in profile, combine with cobalt glass tassels and blue tinsel and foil. A white-bearded wizard dressed in blue stands beneath the tree surrounded by large cobalt glass balls.
It takes very little for Reames to grab an idea for a tree and run with it.
"She has a never-ending lust for glitter," says daughter Lisa Maryon, 40, who lives just down the road. "She gets so excited by every little idea and it grows. It's something she can do now--not like the kitchen project and a few other things."
"The idea for the moon tree came because I was planning to do my kitchen in cobalt with moons," Reames says. The tree was done before the kitchen, but the redecoration is still planned along with an enlargement for a breakfast room, the installation of a hot tub, an extension of a deck to accommodate a children's carousel and myriad other plans and ideas.
Reames, 59, does more than talk. She does the work. From wielding a hammer on her roof to chain-sawing fallen trees on the road to her mountain home above Monte Sereno, she is seen by neighbors and friends as the one either directing the action or creating it. Plans lie in abeyance until she can get to them. "I like to do things myself," she explains.
As a child growing up in Sonora, she always felt Christmas didn't last long enough. Her father worked for a lumbering company that gave the family permission to cut a tree each year from company property. "It was always a white fir, and Mom would not allow us to decorate it until Christmas Eve. Then it was torn down on New Year's Day," she recalls. "It was never long enough for me."
There were always two trees at Christmas all of the years her four children were growing.
"No one else had the elaborate ornaments we had," Maryon recalls. "I've always lived around a little bit of flashiness because of my mother."
Seven years ago, the two trees jumped to five, and she's added an additional one every year since. "But no more!" Reames exclaims. "Except I was going to do a pink flamingo tree for my bedroom," she adds with regret.
The trees each have a personality. The family tree under which all the presents are kept has big lights and multicolored ornaments made by various family members. Some bear rhinestones from Reames' high school jewelry. One is imbedded with amethyst stones from a necklace that belonged to her grandmother. "We got started on the decorations for that tree 35 years ago in Sonora," she recalls. "A niece went around to the neighbors asking for old jewelry." Twenty handmade balls encrusted with the cache have survived the years since.
The idea for a clear glass and iridescent tree struck Carole in the 1980s when she was living with her family in the Mohave Desert. They had bought an asparagus and jojoba ranch outside Palm Springs, where she assumed ramrod duties at a camp for 150 harvest pickers. To give herself occasional respite from the heat and the three-times-a-day tedium of overseeing and supplying the camp kitchen, she would drive into town and visit the stores.
In one of them, she saw a beautiful glass and iridescent tree, cool and ethereal. The tedium was broken. An idea for a new tree was born.
"That"s when I started going crazy over Christmas," she laughs. "Ever since then, it's been overkill, like everything else in my life."
An investment of at least $1,000 has produced an 8-foot tree of white and clear glass balls and beads. Iridescent bows adorn each branch. White lights cause the bows to reflect the green in the tree, giving a teal cast to the hanging crystals.
Another idea came from some golden angels her children had made for the Christmas of 1963. They had used an idea from House Beautiful which at the time was very innovative--dipping sheets in wallpaper paste and draping them over a wire coat hangar bent in the shape of an angel.
"Each of the kids made one," she recalls. "Of course, the angels' hairstyle was of the day, parted down the center and long."
The gold angels have survived and now reside under the gold tree they inspired. The tree is of sumptuous proportions, bearing large gold balls with shiny braid and clusters of tinsel unleashed at one end to look like small explosions.
There is also a small Santa tree made of wicker and covered with every imaginable kind of little Santa, many collected during the children's childhood.
The manzanita tree is a reminder of Reames' Sonora upbringing. The red bark on the gnarled limbs is sprayed white and glittering. But it took a Macy's Christmas window display to give the brush life. "They had reindeer made of manzanita hanging from the height of two stories," she recalls, describing the display. "Among them were pieces of mirror like snow flakes. All of it hung over a mirrored pond. It was so beautiful I went to the city three times just to see it."
A trip to Hong Kong several years ago resulted in Reames finding panda bears. "Well, that just started another tree," she smiles.
The carousel tree reflects her interest in merry-go-round horses. Ten of the carved wooden animals, including a rabbit and an elephant, reside in various parts of the house. The tree horses include a favorite half fish, half horse ornament.
There is a light blue and silver tree in the kitchen, a red poinsettia tree with bright red lights in the den and, finally, the mask tree.
She bought scores of the ceramic masks at the Los Angeles Mart. The tree is loaded to the point where it must be secured with several wires to the wall, a fact learned too late for her favorite tree top mask, which shattered when the tree fell over.
Each mask is different, both in size and decoration. Some are beaded. Others are feathered. All are painted in brilliant gold, green and purple colors. "They were called harlequin masks, and I thought they were so unusual," she laughs. "Then I went to New Orleans last March and discovered they're Mardi Gras masks, and they're everywhere."
So now it is the Mardi Gras tree, a favorite with many friends who view Reames with a combination of awe and affection.
"Carole is a pretty unique individual," says George Wesley, a next-door neighbor for more than 24 years who with other neighbors attends an annual gathering at Reames' house for the holiday. "She keeps getting more [trees], you know. I don't know where they'll go unless she puts one in the stable and another in the garage. Now she's working on the outside."
Reames buys many of her ornaments wholesale at designer shops in Los Angeles, but the bulk of her heady investment is made at Bob Gillmore's florist shop in Saratoga.
The glamour and glitter of the store Christmas displays are the impetus for a style of living that does not stop at Christmas. Reames' wardrobe is made up of blouses and shirts with gems and glitter and a collection of hats and caps designed to catch whatever light is available to make them sparkle. Easter takes up a third of her attic storage space and Halloween another third.
"You can't believe what ringing a doorbell at Reames' sets off on Halloween," says one friend. "There's a cacophony of giggles, moans, cackles and jittering ghosts as some 20 witches and goblins do their thing."
"It's a huge job," says Reames of the changing seasonal decor, "but I enjoy it. Work has never been a problem for me."
Friends agree. They also note she has never avoided anything large or colorful, either, pointing to the ease with which she maneuvers her 40-foot motor home around jeep trails or snaps her Appaloosa stallion to attention during a parade. But more than that, they feel the warmth her efforts create.
"She's a good person. I feel what is coming from her heart," says Ilona Toth, a fellow horsewoman and member of the Los Gatos Horseman, a group that gathers among the trees every Christmas for a sit-down prime rib dinner cooked by Reames. "I love her house at Christmas. It is the one place which reminds me of home," she says, referring to her family home in Hungary, where the season was always given very special treatment.
"We have always had Christmas at home," Reames muses. "While my children were growing, I didn't have the time or money to make things as special as I wanted. Now I can, and it's for my grandchildren. Teaching them a little flash won't harm them," she smiles. "I just wish the season would last a little longer and more people could see it and enjoy it."
By the way, she found her moons. They were behind an Easter rabbit of grand proportions in the area of the attic shared by Christmas and Easter.
This article appeared in the Los Gatos Weekly-Times, December 25, 1996.
©1996 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved