How Do You Decorate for the Holidays?
A Note from the Editor: A quarterly magazine has a leisurely pace, each issue spanning a whole season. On the Fall cover, you might spy a pumpkin on a bungalow…
A Note from the Editor:
A quarterly magazine has a leisurely pace, each issue spanning a whole season. On the Fall cover, you might spy a pumpkin on a bungalow porch, and the Summer edition will always feature a period garden in bloom. But issues never feel like pages torn from the monthly calendar—no need to go orange in October, kelly green in March.
At Arts & Crafts Homes, that kind of timelessness is mostly a good thing. The focus stays where it belongs, on houses with long-term appeal. I’ll admit, though, that I miss doing a December Holiday Issue. Let’s face it, that’s Prom Night for shelter-magazine editors. Not that it would be all sparkle and glitter...in this magazine and in the houses we cover, balsam is more appropriate than tinsel.
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Nevertheless, with silver polished and hearth ablaze, houses are often at their best during the winter holidays. Good time to take pictures! It’s also an opportunity for smitten owners to practice the old-house lifestyle. Readers tell me they decorate like it’s 1915, get wassail recipes from old books, and go out caroling instead of to the mall. Every year I get requests for articles on “how to have a bungalow Christmas.” (Once someone even asked me if I knew what period-appropriate Halloween costumes would be.)
So here’s a request: Snap some photos of this year’s holiday house decorating, and send them to me. With your inspired ideas, I’ll put together an online article that we can all share before next Thanksgiving comes around. Maybe I’ll even include my favorite historic-punch recipe.
Patricia Poore,Editor
ppoore@homebuyerpubs.com
10 Harbor Rd., Gloucester, MA 01930
Patricia Poore is Editor-in-chief of Old House Journal and Arts & Crafts Homes, as well as editorial director at Active Interest Media’s Home Group, overseeing New Old House, Traditional Building, and special-interest publications.
Poore joined Old House Journal when it was a Brooklyn-brownstoner newsletter in the late 1970s. She became owner and publisher and, except for the years 2002–2013, has been its editor. Poore founded the magazines Old-House Interiors (1995–2013) and Early Homes (2004–2017); their content is now available online and folded into Old-House Journal’s wider coverage. Poore also created GARBAGE magazine (1989–1994), the first unaffiliated environmental consumer magazine.
Poore has participated, hands-on, in several restorations, including her own homes: a 1911 brownstone in Park Slope, Brooklyn, and a 1904 Tudor–Shingle Style house in Gloucester, Massachusetts, where she brought up her boys and their wonderful dogs.
