Happy Black Friday! Now that the t(ofu)urkey’s consumed, the Lions have lost won and the 4 a.m. mall madness is over, it’s time to start celebrating my boyfriend’s favorite holiday: Christmas. If he had it his way, we would actually never take down the decorations, and celebrate year round. However, I’m a firm believer that Christmas celebrations don’t start until after Thanksgiving. If you celebrate too much, the holiday isn’t as special! Right?
Anyway. Jake is so Christmas-obsessed that I was surprised he’d never heard of pomander balls! (History lesson alert.) Back when folks didn’t have such great personal hygiene, they would carry around punctured lockets filled with a scented material, such as herbs and ambergris. This was also thought to fight off infection and disease, according to the oh-so-reliable Wikipedia. In modern day, oranges are studded with cloves instead, and the pomander balls are used as wonderfully-scented Christmas decorations. I’ve made them before as a kid in art class, and when Jake told me he’d never heard of them, of course we had to try them out.
You’ll need:
Oranges (I’ve heard lemons and limes work as well, but I’ve always stuck with oranges.)
Thumbtacks (or skewers or pins or anything sharp and pokey, really)
Ribbon
Cloves (You can buy these in bulk fairly inexpensively, but I happened to have extra laying around.)
Scissors
Start by gluing your ribbon around your orange, after you remove the labels, of course. Give it time to dry, and then start studding your orange with cloves!
Use a thumbtack to pierce the orange where you want your clove to go…
Easy as that! These smell absolutely amazing when they’re finished (great for masking the smell of a college apartment) and look oh so pretty! Hang them from trees, cluster a bunch of them together in a bowl or set them on mantles. Once mine dries, it will hang in Jake’s closet.
I can’t wait to share/ see the rest of everybody’s holiday crafts, and to my Jewish friends, Happy Hanukkah!
