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Photograph by Douglas Rider
Bright Idea: Five-year-old Marissa Sorensen helps her grandmother Martha Hoffman decorate one of the Christmas trees.
Christmas spirit lights up house
By Mary Ann Cook
At first glance this Los Gatos house looks much like its neighbors, adorned in Christmas finery now that the season is nigh. But a look inside reveals this house is far different--a difference of degree. Get out a calculator, do the math.
And find that the number of Christmas trees decked out in seasonal splendor and stationed throughout the four-bedroom house is 14--at last count. The fanatic sorcerer behind all those lighted, glorified limbs is one Martha Hoffman.
The rest of the year she holds her enthusiasms pretty well in check, but at Christmastime, she becomes unleashed. Or, as she puts it, "I go ape." The Zen mantra, "less is more" is not in the Hoffman Christmas vocabulary. Her theme song is more likely to be "Nothing succeeds like excess."
This annual extravaganza gradually evolved through the years, beginning in 1984. That was the year that this collector inherited all the family Christmas accouterments from both her parents and grandparents. This windfall seemed to demand its own tree.
So a 7-foot tree was found, stationed in the family room, and made resplendent with family treasures. In the Hoffman oeuvre perhaps the most glorious of all the trees--certainly the largest and the most chock-full--is a huge flocked beauty in the living room, decorated in Victoriana.
It's 10 feet tall and looks as if snow has freshly fallen on it. Except that it's hard to detect any snow or even the limbs themselves because it's so laden with artifacts. The crafty buyer found the tree at an after-holiday sale years ago at Pool, Patio & Things.
Aglow with lights embedded in giant roses, the impressive tree is festooned with antique dolls, huge bows, an oriental mask, iridescent grapes, sachet, a Valentine hand-painted by her husband's father for his mother and frames that hold family photos or famous sayings by poets. And of course--more roses.
The entire apparition is basically done in maroon, pink and gold, in deference to a copy of a huge Georgia O'Keefe painting in those colors that hangs behind the tree. On the tree is a Barbie doll dressed in Victorian garb. "There's an oxymoron," says Hoffman in an aside, while moving on.
A house tour helps explain the evolution of the tree-trimming proliferation. Each tree has a different theme, since special events in the Hoffmans' lives needed to be acknowledged. The Capitol engagement tree is a case in point.
Mementos of the Hoffmans' engagement in Washington, D.C., are festooned on a 7-footer found in one of the bedrooms. Red, white and blue ribbons stream from it, plus replicas of Uncle Sam, the White House, Supreme Court, an old-fashioned mailbox and postcards with a Washington, D.C., postmark.
Then there are small trees to commemorate each of three small grandchildren. Marissa Sorensen is the oldest at 5.
Marley is nearly 2, so her tree is adorned with toddler-friendly artifacts; and Jackson is but a few weeks old, so his tree holds baby memorabilia.
Also in the master bedroom is a tall Southwest tree. So called because of its red pepper lights, Mexican decorations and because it was designed in keeping with the wall hanging behind it, brilliant with reds, oranges, pinks. There are dream catchers, worry dolls, clay adobe figures and dwellings.
Martha, too, was a longtime teacher--at Marshall Lane School in the Campbell district. And she was director of three separate chorale groups there.
Martha Hoffman is never quite convinced when she's reached her decorating finale: There may be more tree ideas lurking in the wings, anxious to be decorated. "I never could understand how anyone could be bored. There are so many projects," she says.
Each tree is lighted and the size varies from 3 to 10 feet. All are artificial and all are folded or taken apart, piece by piece, and stored in the attic the rest of the year.
And Shirley Allen, a professional tree trimmer, helps assemble the largest tree.
At the end of the project the Hoffmans hold an open house. Husband Russell started this tradition by inviting everyone they knew to show off his spouse's handiwork.
The Christmas decoration fervor goes back, actually, to her childhood. "I had this disease then," says Martha Hoffman about growing up in El Paso. "We never used the fireplace, so I talked my dad into letting me build a miniature village in it. It had a ski-jump lift coming off the ledge.
"Cotton for the snow, evergreen twigs for the forest and a mirror lake. Stars and moons were cut out of tin can lids." She also talked her dad (or maybe the gene was already there) into decorating outside. Big bulbs were hung from the tree and speakers rigged up under it.
Christmas carols were chorused out and the resultant display snarled traffic. "We used to get a kick out of dousing our lights inside and watching cars slow down to take a look."
So the decorating seeds were germinating even in childhood. It's clear that Mrs. Hoffman is an antique lover and a history buff, being the repository for at least three generations of family treasures. She collects dolls, postcards and stamps. She would have us believe that these collections were amassed for her students--to aid in history lessons during her teaching days.
But somehow her own passion for these artifacts belies the teaching aid theory. Why is it no surprise to hear she's a member of the Santa Clara County Rose Society? Retired for the past three years, Hoffman wonders how she managed to get in so much decorating when she was still teaching.
"I used to get them decorated in a week." She can't imagine how, except that she's a night owl--and loves going berserk at least once a year. "A break from the humdrum of life," she says.
Now, about that table all set for dinner in the living room with her grandmother's dishes and her mother-in-law's salt cellars. Is it ever used, or is it part of the Christmas decor? "Oh, no, it's like that all year. And yes, we use it regularly."
And, it serves a hidden advantage. "People notice it and say, 'Oh, you're expecting company.' It's a good way to speed unwanted guests on their way."
Although, it's hard to imagine Hoffman having unwanted guests. She seems to live by the Mexican adage that hangs on one of the trees: "It's not the pesos but the amigos that tell a man's wealth. When you're robbed of friends, you're robbed of joy."
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Willow Glen, California Since 1992
