The holidays this year are less coming and going, and more about making stay-at-home just as fun. There seems to be an abundance of virtual holiday parties, but what I’ve mostly noticed is people working extra hard to decorate like never before.
So many friends are decking every one of their halls that my competitive spirit is pushing me to be just as festive. This led me to an online something I’d sworn off years ago but find myself dipping my holiday toe into more this year than ever.
That’s right, I’m back on Pinterest.
It’s literally been years since the last time I pinned anything, and I could easily go down about a dozen rabbit holes (festive appetizers, 20-minute workouts, knitting and more knitting), but the first time back I tried to focus and entered “holiday decorating” in the search bar.
Boom! What followed was an explosion of holiday cheer, photos of everything from DIY ornaments made from wine corks to evergreen wreaths; chalkboard lettering how-tos to tablescapes and napkin folds; advent calendars to creative ways to wrap money to how to dress your fireplace mantle.
Then I saw the ornaments, specifically the bright, vintage baubles I recognized as Shiny Brite. They looked like a lot of the ones we had stored away in our own Christmas boxes, and all of a sudden I couldn’t pin fast enough.
If you’re not familiar, the Shiny Brite company produced the majority of American Christmas tree ornaments in the 1940s and 1950s. It was the brainchild of Max Eckardt, a New York manufacturer whose business up until 1938 was importing handblown glass ornaments from Germany. Realizing that the impending war in Europe would cut off his supply chain, Eckardt contracted with Corning Glass to adapt its light-bulb-making machinery to mass-produce clear glass ornaments, which were painted by hand at Eckardt’s factories in New Jersey.
In December 1939, the first 250,000 Shiny Brite ornaments appeared exclusively in Woolworth stores nationwide. Costing just pennies per bauble, they were a huge hit with shoppers. Today, Shiny Brite ornaments are highly collectible, especially the ones produced during the 1940s when cardboard toppers replaced metal due to the war effort.
We have several vintage ornaments given to us by grandmothers and parents, many of them in their original Shiny Brite boxes. Some are broken, but most of them are in decent shape (though when you touch them the paint rubs off on your finger so we know to be extra careful).
According to Pinterest, I should display our Shiny Brites under a glass cloche on a silver or gold stand covered with artificial snow and accessorized with two or three vintage bottle brush Christmas trees. Or I could heap them in a giant silver punch bowl, or maybe string them with ribbon and hang them individually from a curtain rod in front of a window. I could even hot-glue dozens of them to a wreath form to create a one-of-a-kind statement piece for a wall.
There are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of possibilities, depending on how much time I want to spend looking for them. This is, of course, the curse of Pinterest, and a reminder of why I opted out in the first place.
Still, I do love those Shiny Brites. Just the other day, my father gave me a vintage tree topper in its original box, a gorgeous glass spike about six inches tall, sparkly and shiny and made in Romania. It’s obviously not a Shiny Brite since it wasn’t made in the USA, but it’s beautiful nonetheless.
My dilemma now is whether to buy a glass cloche under which to display it, since it’s much too delicate to go on top of our tree. I have a vision but lack the materials to execute it the Pinterest way.
Maybe it’s just as well it stays in its original box. I’ll pin some ideas and save it for next year.