Photograph by George Sakkestad
Carole Reames loves decorating her Christmas trees--all 11 of them.
By Suzanne Cristallo
Every year for the past seven, Carole Reames 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.
"With all of the other things going on around here, it takes at least two weeks to get the trees decorated," Reames 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.
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."
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. "I like to do things myself," she says.
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. "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 Years 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.
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."
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.
The idea for a clear glass and iridescent tree struck Carole in the 1980s when she was living with her family in on a ranch in the Mohave Desert. 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, and 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--dipping sheets in wallpaper paste and draping them over a wire coat hangar bent in the shape of an angel.
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 also is a Santa tree made of wicker and covered with every imaginable kind of 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 are 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 snowflakes. All of it hung over a mirrored pond. It was so beautiful I went to the city three times just to see it."
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.
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. They load the tree 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.
"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 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.
"It's a huge job," says Reames of the changing seasonal decor, "but I enjoy it. Work has never been a problem for me."
This article appeared in the Saratoga News, December 25, 1996.
©1996 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved