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Happy New Year! I have been down with the flu bug along with many others for the past two weeks. I am hoping you have taken many great photos of your church decorated for Christmas and will share with us here.
The catalogues are starting to come into my office so it must be January! I love looking through all of the religious goods catalogues and finding new items. You may want to keep one of those stand-up storage files in your sacristy for your supply catalogues. Almy’s and Egan’s usually are sent routinely to the church office, but all companies will be delighted to send a catalogue and sometimes even fabric swatches and samples upon request. If you have a good resource, please send me the company name so we can share it here. I will be posting catalogue resources this year beginning with Monastery Icons http://www.monasteryicons.com/
The company has a beautiful line of icons. I ordered the St. Damiano crucifix to the left a few years ago for Taize prayer services. You will enjoy surfing their website for cards, beautiful jewelry, statues, garden statuary, Celtic designs, incense, banners, and many other kinds of religious items. There is a link on the site to request a free catalogue. Perhaps someone in your altar guild will be appointed to maintain a catalogue supply archive for your sacristy. It is always a help to have a catalogue with photos at the ready when a donor comes forward wishing to donate an item to the church.
I have worked for many years as a florist, managed a shop, and conducted training workshops for flower arranging for churches- but I must say I have never been so enlightened and amused by any publication as much as Gay Estes hilarious manual The Church Ladies’ Guide to Divine Flower Arranging. Ms. Estes lives in Texas and brings wit and humor and plain old practical common sense to the age-old issue of how to decorate altars on Sundays and holidays economically, artistically, and appropriately. The chapter titles will make you smile and the illustrations and diagrams are wonderful. This is a must-have for any flower guild and can be procured for about 8 dollars used on Amazon.com. Now that summer is here and our gardens are bursting forth for altar vases- let Gay help you arrange them in style! My favorite idea?- using upside tomato cages to make Christmas Trees by bagging potted poinsettia plants in “Baggies” and wiring them to the cage, rootball inside. Fabulous!
And while we are about flowers- don’t forget St. Columba’s Annual Garden Party and Flower Festival this coming Saturday.
Thanks for sharing photos of Palm Sunday and Easter! The Paschal candle is spectacular- so easy to do using the jello mold ring, yet so effective and festive. The idea of a fan of palms around the Gospel on Palm Sunday is one I have never seen before- very nice. Got photos? Please send to revdma@aol.com. Thanks Susan- and the hard-working guild at Epiphany for a beautiful Easter and Holy Week effort.
The hardest part of floral decoration is usually finding the proper mechanic which will hold a block of wet Oasis flower foam where you want to put it. It is a custom in the UK and America to decorate the Paschal candle for Easter Vigil and Easter Sunday morning. ideally the candle should continue to be decorated for a full forty days, but two weeks is good to aim for at the least. The photo at the left shows the mechanic in place- a lowly jello mold ring! These can be found almost anywhere for very little money and they work beautifully. The center hole comes in a variety of diameters- if the one you find is too large, a cuff of aluminum foil can contour around the candle with no difficulty. Plastic molds or bundt cake tins will also work although metal pans seem to have a better weight and sit firmly on the candle socket. The Paschal candle in the photo below was done for Christmas at Church of the Epiphany in East Providence using the jello ring. This demonstration was done in a workshop in November. Fine fern, baby’s breath and small white roses are used.
Always use fresh Oasis, do not put in and pull out flowers repeatedly as this clogs up the stems. Some drooping or vine-like foilage is good for the first layer as it drops gracefully around the candlestick. All ferns and ivy or beaded eucalyptus (used in the photo above) will look wonderful. Then long-lasting sturdy flowers such as white daisy poms, small shrub roses, alstromeria, and miniature carnations will hold up a long time. Baby’s breath, caspia, statice or wax flower make nice filler flowers. Be sure to soak the Oasis brick at least one hour to obtain maximum absorption- 2 hours is even better unless you are using the quick-soak Oasis (this will be marked on the wrapper or box). When wet, Oasis is easy to carve into neat chunks which will fit around your jello ring. The Oasis company does make a pre-formed ring but it does not hold up well when filled with a lot of flower stems and holds very little water. If you use the jello or cake ring, you can water the arrangement daily and the ring will catch and hold the water. Bundt pan shown below (upside down).
The video below comes from St. Wilfrid’s in England. I must confess to being a fan of the English approach to church flowers. The video below will give you some ideas for next week. The pale flowers are very effective for Easter- pale pastels and a great deal of the use of white flowers including lilies. Hopefully your cut forsythia is beginning to open up nicely for Palm Sunday and with some luck it should hang on for the Chapel of Repose on Thursday if kept out of the sun and cool. Church Easter flower donation envelopes should be coming in steadily, and your order should be placed at the nursery now for delivery.
Decorating for Easter Sunday morning can be one time in the year we can get exuberant and “over the top”. Don’t neglect the front doors of the church. A willow basket filled with daffs or tulips, pussy willows and forsythia will welcome visitors and passersby. A cheery bouquet just inside the front door is a real English touch, and a welcome sight for those pausing inside to be seated. Even a little arrangement or pot of Spring tulips in the sacristy or choir vesting room brings the joy of Easter to those folks who are part of the service to come.
There’s no better time for baskets or bulb gardens for the windows. Lovely terracotta pot gardens featuring bulbs in various heights can nestle on window sills and will keep bloom for a good long time if tended. Baskets filled with pastel statice, heather, forsythia, wax flower, daisy mums and baby’s breath can give a wildflowery, just picked from the meadow look, and have the bonus of being airy and tall.
I always like to tuck in a little surprise for the children to find- a small carved wooden bird, a real bird’s nest, or a bought one with a bit of moss, naturalistic feather butterflies, beautiful pebbles or stones, twisted willow branches, one perfect little bird’s egg (artificial of course). Michael’s Craft store has many little treasures such as these.
My favorite potted plants are johnny jump-ups and pansies or violas. You can get a flat, or individual small green pots. They make excellent fill-ins between big pots, or as a border at the bottom of a garden layout in a chapel, base of the chancel steps or bottom of the rood screen. These hearty little plants can also be transferred outside early as they can take the cool weather. Then you will enjoy them well into the hot month of July before they finally get leggy and must be cut back.
We will be talking Easter flowers this week ! Throw out all that used and crumbly old dry Oasis full of holes. The green Oasis foam bricks should not be reused. This is the time to get fresh bricks for the Easter arrangements.
Easter Flower Display
With Easter decorating much on our minds these days, a new hardcover volume by noted floral arranger, gardener and author Judith Blacklock will be hitting the shelves in 2 weeks. Church Flowers: The Essential Guide to Arranging Flowers in Church . This can now be pre-ordered on Amazon at a savings of $24 over list price! Visit Judith’s web site at http://www.judithblacklock.com/ to learn more about her titles, classes and free online newsletter.
St. John’s Episcopal Church in Montclair, N.J.
Some altar guild workers will tell you that preparing for Maundy Thursday is the busiest time of the year. A lot will be happening at the evening service, and many preparations need to be made to make sure all will be on hand when required. It is good to have all details ironed out well in advance, with lists made, and items ready for order by the end of this week. The ewer and basin for foot-washing should be polished, ample quantities of towels at the ready, and the persons standing by in the sacristy for the stripping of the altar and receiving of altar items should be selected now. White altar hangings, including the white veiling for the cross (the purple must be changed for white on Maundy Thursday), a spotless white fair linen, and ideally a white linen cloth protector which fits the tops of the altar of repose, an ample supply of candles, matches, polished candlesticks and ciborium, and of course, the flowers and decorations for the Chapel of Repose.
Not all churches have a side altar, but many beautiful Chapels of Repose can be constructed in another part of the church which are meditative and serene. Flowers and potted plants should be very fresh, as these usually will be held over for the Great Vigil decoration on Saturday and will also be the decoration on Easter Sunday morning. The photo above shows potted plants in woven baskets, which is a delightful and preferable alternative to garish tin foil in shades of pink, gold, and lavender. Natural-looking containers are a must when displaying potted plants. Opt for dull green paper from your nursery if no better option is available. Avoid bows and fripperies always. Potted palms left over from Palm Sunday make an effective green and tall backdrop for the Maundy Garden. The Chapel of Repose requires some careful thought to achieve the effect of harmony, tranquility and solemnity. I have seen some wonderful effects achieved with mosses, ferns, small pots of pansies and johnny-jump-ups, a little fountain, forced forsythia, pussy willows, miniature daffodils, and other delicate early Spring flowers. White flowers or pale pastels work well in flower vases for the altar gradines. Jasmine, camellias, gardinias, hydrangea, heathers, and lilac plants are useful to serve as mid-sized plantings in pots. Small shrubs or bushes which can be planted after Easter are economically sensible alternatives. Scharntner’s Farms in Exeter offers small potted shrubs, as do many RI nurseries. Lilies are an expected flower, but be sure the pollen on the ends of the stamens is removed before the lilies are brought into church. Get lilies with most of the buds tight, as they will open quickly in a warm room. You will want tall, medium, and short variety of plants to give the effect of being in a real garden. Don’t be afraid to use props, pedestals, and even bricks to achieve varying heights, -just be sure to disguise your mechanics!
As each parish must make arrangements according to its worship space, each Garden of Repose will be unique. Still, we can all aim for a beautiful and meditative place where care and thought have gone into creating a haven for contemplation. Sadly, few photographs exist of Maundy chapels. I have seen everything from paving stones, fountains, beach glass and sand, shells, pebbles,elaborate canopies, and even a live canary in a small wicker cage hidden in the greenery with tiny, realistic silk butterflies perched on shrubberies. That which evokes nature seems most successful. Adequate seating, some reading material relevant to the day, and candlelight are all important. I have always used a linen cloth to fit the altar top over the fair linen which will catch wax from dripping candles and falling flowerets and leaves. It is a great precaution to take in protecting the fair linen. It is good to remember that the priest and procession must be able to get into the space during the transfer of the sacrament. Common sense is always a useful commodity in all endeavors in church decoration. Please share photographs of YOUR Garden of Repose this year.
Thanks to Susan Bergstrand who has sent in some photos of Christmas decorations this year from Church of the Epiphany. White Christmas was the inspiration. The Paschal candle was decorated with white roses and million star baby’s breath and the green wreaths were trimmed in rich creamy velvet. Poinsettias?- all white! The credence table was especially lovely with some unexpected blossoms of tulips. Pew ends and a swag of greens on the pulpit are very festive touches. The winterberry and hyperion berries are also an inspired touch on the tree and window decorations. What a welcoming vision to see that glowing tree shining in the night for passersby and neighbors. Thanks for sharing, Susan- just lovely.
“We went with the white Christmas theme. Everyone loved it. We also had a huge Christmas tree for the first time that was visible through the glass doors as you entered the church and through a large window facing the street. The tree was decorated with natural material-mostly silver dollar plant and winter berries and pearl beads. The white LED lights gave a bluish glow. It was topped with a silver star. I had the tree on a timer and a church neighbor called and asked if we could keep the tree lit later into the night because she enjoyed seeing it!”
Nothing says “Welcome” on a cold, dark night like luminarias. Using simple brown or white paper bags with a tealight or votive inside to line the sidewalk and stairs to the church is an inexpensive and elegant way to light the way to Christmas Eve services. If the night is dry, kitty litter, sand or gravel should be used to fill the bags 2-3 inches. This will weigh the bag down and provide a safe support for the votive candle.
Bags may be rolled down a bit at the top, or perforated with a paper punch to make a pattern design of small holes through which the light might shine. The custom of luminarias seems to originate in Mexico and the Southwestern United States. White luminarias shining in a velvet black night -a beautiful way to welcome Christmas!
The poinsettia has become the expected flower of the season, no doubt due to the bright red and green colors it offers- colors which the secular world has adopted as the official Colors of Christmas. In actuality, Christmastide is a season for which the Church has advocated the use of white- or gold, white, and/or silver. Yes, there are red feast days, Holy Innocents and St. Stephen, Martyr- but white is the color for Christmas. There might be white poinsettias, paperwhites, white amaryllis, white orchids, white tulips, white chrysanthemums, white roses. The white rose has historically been the symbol for the Incarnation.
If red poinsettias are a must-have in your parish, there are a few tips to consider. In the slide show below, have a good look at the pots. Do you see rich red flower heads- or do you see reams of shiny bright gold foil? Silver, red, gold, and patterned high sheen foils will snatch the glory from just about any flower. Nurseries and florists now stock pre-formed dark green foil “cups” which will snug around the green plastic pot and which will keep your plants from dribbling but at the same time not scream FOIL. Cheap ribbon bows and furbelows seldom improve the beauty of fresh plants, especially in a sacred space. Natural is always preferable. Another important consideration is plant placement. Masses of grouped pots in front of the altar overwhelm the chancel and make processing a logistical nightmare. Decoration should never interfer with the traffic pattern or accessibility of the clergy, choir and altar party. Pots strung out all in a row like a line of soldiers decked out in shiny foil is also not a pleasing vision. Group odd numbers (3,5,7,) of plants together and remember sight lines for those sitting in pews. Flowers on the floor do not get seen. Poinsettia pots in windows can be tipped so the rich flower heads are showing, not the ugly pots, by using a small block of wood or prop so the pot may be tipped with heads pointing outward. This will make a far more pleasing vision. Mix poinsettias with other fresh greens like cypress, fir, holly, and wonderful potted ivies. Most of all, plants and flowers, in most cases are memorials- and given in memory of departed loved ones who can no longer be with us at Christmas. Thoughtful placement, therefore, is so important.
The English understand church flowers and revel in presenting their gardens and devising brilliant flower shows for the congregation as well as designing spectacular altar flowers for holidays and Sunday worship. Click on the arrow to view a flower show at St. John’s. Be sure your speakers are turned on to hear the music. St. Columba’s in Middletown has a fabulous flower show in June. Are there any other parishes out there in the diocese which hosts a flower or garden display? Please let me know so we can post a few of YOUR photos.
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