I call out your name, it feels like a song I know so well And it whispers and roars like an orchestra You call out my name like no one before, it sounds like I… Am called to a home that I never had
This year for my Bday I finally drew these dorks married.
So I make costumes. Not your average fitted attire. I mean I do that too, but not just that. I make BIG costumes. Like with metal and shit. So about October-ish, I contacted a costume making studio that does work with a convention called “Dickens-fair”. Maybe You’ve heard of it. It is a Christmas fair that turns the whole center into a replica of Dickens’ London, complete with actors who represent his characters. I had always wanted to go and was just trying to think of ways to help out.
I contacted the head person for costumes for the actors and I told her I make period pieces and I specialize in weird stuff, but also in turning old thrift store items into period attire. She emailed me back and was like “Come meet me” and so I did. I came out to her studio and was sitting with her folks, showing her pictures of all the stuff I’d done I was proud of. Then she says…”Wait…I have an idea.”
She tells me that every year, Dickens-fair has this one performer who is a fiddling Christmas tree. Like What? yes. A tree…that fiddles. Apparently it’s like the fucking Mickey of Dickens-fair. Only, her outfit was made a few years back from fabric, and kind of looked like a dunce cap with streamers. She told me that this year, the Fiddling Tree wanted a new costume. She says “Can you make a Christmas tree that can fiddle?”
I’m like…no. “If she can fiddle and wear a tree, then I can build a tree that can be worn by a fiddler. Hell yeah.”
And she’s like…”It can’t touch her shoulders, and it has to fit over her normal costume, and it has to be period accurate, so all period ornaments.”
And I’m like…bitch, “I got this.”
She says “Come back in a week and meet her and give us your idea.”
So I designed…because I make costumes and I have Christmas in my blood. My mom always tells this story about how when I was like 4, I was with her at the train station in LA and I saw this man sitting on a bench. Now this man wore blue denim overalls, with a long sleeved red shirt, had a white beard, and carried a wooden cane carved with Rudolph, who had a gemstone nose…He was fucking Santa. Admit it. And 4 year old me was like……SANTA? My mom always says I stared at him hard and then tried to climb in his lap, like for real Tim Allen from Santa Clause style, but he was cool, and pulled me into his lap and had a whole conversation with me about whether or not I was being good…in July. According to my mom, he told her he was a professional Santa and this was something he always got from kids, and that he loved it. He then got picked up by a woman in a convertible and drove away.
My mom has been telling me this story since I was five.
So this year, about 3 years ago, I was like…A Christmas tree that fiddles…I got this.
I mean, I drew this shit. I went to hardware stores and craft shops and I priced out this shit. There were emails about what I could expect to be the substructure. I made a barbie doll scale model with pipe cleaners. I came in with a fucking Plan.
And they laughed and said… “We love the barbie…OK.”
So I had a budget. I had an idea. And I went with it. I made measurements and all sorts of stuff. Let me tell you about this costume…
This woman is 6′2″. She fiddles. She wears, beneath the tree, a full period costume. This means a bell hoop skirt and a corset. I made sure they had a hoop for her that was carved from fucking PVC pipe and a steel boned corset, and I went to work. I had frames…on fucking chains…from MY CEILING. I had the whole thing mapped out.
A lightweight metal skirt in a grid pattern made from chain, linked together in a mesh. gathered at the waist and clipped like a belt. Over the head, a cone-like structure carved out of mesh, mounted on braces that were lashed to the torso with straps bolted into the metal cross-braces. A light aluminum frame. And over this…a cape, made from long dangling chains. Every inch of chain was coated in weatherproofing green paint. Every few links…a limb hacked off a fake plastic Christmas tree. Woven amidst these? A series of handmade and donated ornaments, including fake cookies made from clay, fake candles with a remote control that controlled the flicker. I had paper ornaments, streamers, instruments made of brass, birds, candies made from plastic…I mean I had everything, and all to period. I worked and worked on this for months and had numerous fittings.
The aluminum headpiece came along. I was stressed. I didn’t know exactly how I was going to make this fucking cone mount on her chest so her shoulders would be free. I mean I had ideas – like a cone, but with a back and front piece that came down her torso and to which, straps were fixed that clipped at the sides. This would distribute weight evenly through the corset and allow for freedom of the shoulders. But! I didn’t have a firm plan. I went to the hardware store.
Me. Three months pregnant. All cute and glowy and shit.
And I walked into the section where all the plumbing and flashing is. Now I know my way around. I hate going here because I’m usually hassled by a dude who thinks girls can’t know shit about hardware. But this time…this time it was a nice old man with a snowy white beard, wearing a red shirt and a green apron. I’m like…he’s a Santa…this is fate.
He comes over and says “What can I help you with today?”
And so I tell him the whole story. About the tree, and the odd parameters, the physics, the complexities. I tell him what I’m trying to create, this cone of metal lashed to the chest, and he…
Smiles.
He tells me, “I’m a Santa. I do it every year. I love this project! I want to help!”
As we are brain storming, and he’s showing me all the products that might work, he mentions to me that he isn’t the first Santa in his family.
“My dad did it for most of his life.”
“Man, I have such respect for Santas. My mom always tells this story about me meeting this man who looked like a Santa at a train station and trying to sit on his knee.”
The man got very quiet. “At a train station?”
“Yeah, like he was wearing overalls and a red shirt and had this carved cane…”
“I remember that cane,” he says.
I turn to him… “The one with Rudolph?”
“With a ruby nose. Yeah. After he died I looked everywhere for it, but I couldn’t find it.”
I stopped. Like straight up stopped moving, with like my limbs all cold as snow. “Wait a minute? What? Are you telling me you know that Santa?”
“I think that was my dad. He is exactly as you say. He worked on the railroad as a conductor for most of his life, and when he retired they gave him free travel. He was always taking trips, and he always went as Santa, because after he retired, he did that full time.”
“Did your mom own a convertible? Like a sleek one?”
“Yup.”
I lost it. I’m in the middle of fucking Ace Hardware, talking to Santa, about my Santa, the one I can’t remember, but always knew existed, and that man is this Santa’s daddy. And here I am…shopping for parts to a fiddling Christmas tree. I cried like a little kid. He hugged me. I apologized and told him I was in my first trimester. He said it was fine. He gave me his card. Told me he was glad to hear his father had had such an impact on kids. He helped me pick out my tree pieces and then checked me out.
I built the best fucking tree you ever saw. I wove metal. I bent aluminum. I used riveters. I worked with saws, and vices, and paint, and glue, and fucking plastic clay. I did everything wearing gloves and a mask because of baby. I did it all like I had a fire under me, because fuck that…I’m not letting Santas down.
And this is what I made.
This was the dry fitting, the trial run. We fluffed it out with more limbs, added bits here and there, or planned for more. I strung this fucking thing from my rafters on a mannequin and we had a tree decorating party, putting ornaments on it like it was a real tree. Then we had her put on the whole thing, and we watched her play “O Tannenbaum”
And it was the best Christmas moment ever, for me.
That year, I had free tickets to Dickens-fair. I went and caught sight of my Christmas tree fiddling around, playing songs for kids and spreading the spirit. Then later I saw the fiddler dancing in Fezziwig’s ball, with her tree skirt still on over her dress. It was awesome, seeing this 7.5′ tall tree gliding around, this thing I made, with help from My Santa’s Son.
I was Santa that year. It made my holiday.
So the next time you meet a Santa… it might not be the real guy… but you needed to meet him. And if you are a Santa… this is what you do. This is your legacy.
Keep it up.
Hi! Person who works the Great Dickens Christmas Fair here. I have seen this tree about in our fake London and I was always so in awe of it. I can’t stress this, the women who wears this literally looks like a Christmas tree and it’s magical and I was always like ‘that’s crazy and definitely Fair, I love it’.
You’re a joy and always welcome at the Fair 🙂 I would love to give you tickets for this year and/or future years. You’ve made our fake London more magical and for that I can’t thank you enough.
Wow that’s so sweet!!!!
Unfortunately, I’m not going to be there this year as I’m traveling literally the entire time the fair is on, but I might just take you up on this in future years if you’re game! I love going to this fair and wearing my period costume I made. Really a fun fair. Thank you so much for the offer.
Ah bell hoops…
Are you wearing bloomers also?
That is a very fine gown.
True Story: I’m dating the Fiddling Christmas Tree.
oh my god every single part of this was magical but then i get to the end and THE TREE IS YOUR GIRLFRIEND this is the best thing ever.
Qunari are empowering Saarebas with lyrium so that they can become stronger, open temporary Rifts, slow time down, and use mysterious spells, all through unknown means.
Tevinter is terribly weakened, corrupted, and will not last in the war against the Qunari.
Fen’Harel, now incredibly powerful, is planning to eliminate the corrupted parts of the Qun (good thing), but also to tear down the Veil (not that good, depending on the consequences). He will probably help the Tevinter slaves in rebelling against their masters too.
Titans are awakening. They are enormous beings living deep underground, whose blood has been consumed for millennia by mages and Templars alike, shaping the world as it is today. They also seem able to influence events above ground and they are very angry with the world or at least with the elves. They will probably re-establish their contact/link with the dwarves.
Something is happening in Weisshaupt, the Wardens have gone silent, and a new Blight is most likely coming.
The Evanuris are still locked away, but it’s obvious they will get free soon. They are a bunch of homicidal assholes who will not think twice about conquering Thedas again. They might be also tainted by the Blight, if the theories “Evanuris locked away with the Blight in the Black City” are true.
If Kieran was born, Flemeth/Mythal took the Old God’s soul from him, planning to do something with it. We still don’t know what it is, but it’s unlikely she will stay “dead”. She still has to have her revenge, her “reckoning which will shake the very heavens”.
Either Morrigan or the Inquisitor drank from the Well of Sorrows and the consequences of that act are still unclear, but whatever they are, they are going to suck or at least be mildly disturbing.
Mysterious Dalish elves live in the Tirashan. They are violent, cruel, and worship the Forgotten Ones.
Strange people from the Volca Sea are returning after a long absence, claiming a terrible calamity struck their lands.
We still don’t know what lies beyond the Amaranthine Ocean, but whatever it is, it makes people go insane and suicidal.
socially conscious danielle Lecturing her bf about ingrained prejudice and class warfare literally every time they are together
danielle just fuckin throwing apples at the crown prince of france for daring to steal her father’s horse
“i thrashed him” cut to tiny gustav covered in mud
i will deny you the throne and siMPLY LIVE FOREVER
leonardo da vinci just…. in general
danielle being ride or die with her manor servants to the point where she spends a literal fortune to get one of them out of indentured slavery
“you may have whatever you can carry” *fucking picks up the prince of france*
jacqueline always being on danielle’s side and befriending her
little history things like terrible tennis, utopia, the introduction of chocolate, a newly painted mona lisa, etc
the Theme Song™
“it looks like rain” danielle’s FACE
it’s supposed to be in france but no one speaks french or has a french accent
the Villain with his Villain Mustache
“were the only the two of you?” “yes. well, and the chicken sire”
you have TWO HANDS make it YOURSELF /mic drop
*throws temper tantrum* “there was a bee”
danielle’s Entrance to the ball looking like an ethereal angel from another realm
henry showing up for a Dashing Rescue but danielle’s already saved herself
the PAINTING
the entire thing is basically a story to one-up the grimm brothers which i can get behind
Dougray Scott (the prince) in these pants
Dannielle’s childhood friend who is never anything else than just a really good friend, no nice guy™ to be found here, just two besties
an evil stepmother who is still a three-dimensional character, which makes her treatment of Danielle even more heartbreaking
Danielle’s character is defined by her passion, mind and yearning for justice and the prince explicitly tells her that he falls in love with her because of the way she thinks and how eloquently she can argue her causes
the prince is the one who has to learn from her and have character development to be worthy of her
a blatantly romantic movie that is still genuinely funny and smart and really well made and acted and proves how good that genre can be
“michelangelo is trapped under a ceiling in Rome”
IF YOU
suffer your people to be ILL-EDUCATED
and their manners corrupted from INFANCY
and then PUNISH THEM for that which their first education DISPOSED THEM
what else is to be concluded,
SIRE,
but that you first MAKE THIEVES
and then PUNISH THEM?
YESSSSSSSS
also the costuming, while not perfect (generally a lot more Italian than French), is pretty awesome!
Also, that the mustachioed bad guy is Riff Raff from The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
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