Just about every Christmas Martha Stewart appears on TV and tells us how we too can have a Martha Stewart Christmas at home. Have you ever tried? Years ago Martha Stewart wrote this letter to the popular author and columnist, Erma Bombeck:
Hi Erma,
This perfectly delightful note is being sent on paper I made myself to tell you what I have been up to. Since it snowed last night, I got up early and made a sled with old barn wood and a glue gun. I hand painted it in gold leaf, got out my loom, and made a blanket in peaches and mauves. Then to make the sled complete, I made a white horse to pull it, from DNA molecules that I had just sitting around in my craft room.
By then, it was time to start making the place mats and napkins for my 20 breakfast guests. I’m serving the old standard Stewart twelve-course breakfast, but I’ll let you in on a little secret: I didn’t have time to make the tables and chairs this morning, so I used the ones I had on hand.
Before I moved the table into the dining room, I decided to add just a touch of the holidays. So I repainted the room in pinks and stenciled gold stars on the ceiling. Then, while the homemade bread was rising, I took antique candle molds and made the dishes (exactly the same shade of pink) to use for breakfast. These were made from Hungarian clay, which you can get at almost any Hungarian craft store.
Well, I must run. I need to finish the buttonholes on the dress I’m wearing for breakfast. I’ll get out the sled and drive this note to the post office as soon as the glue dries on the envelope I’ll be making. Hope my breakfast guests don’t stay too long, I have 40,000 cranberries to string with bay leaves before my speaking engagement at noon.
Love, Martha Stewart
P.S. When I made the ribbon for this typewriter, I used 1/8-inch gold gauze. I soaked the gauze in a mixture of white grapes and blackberries which I grew, picked, and crushed last week just for fun.
I read this letter with raised eyebrows. In February, 1998 I was riding in a car with my literary host in Lexington, Kentucky on my 5-week book tour for Love Adds a Little Chocolate. To break the silence in the car, I asked her: “Have you had anybody famous in the car lately that you were driving around?” Without hesitation she said, “Well, I had Martha Stewart and her entourage with me the week before Thanksgiving.” “What was it like, I inquired?”
“We started talking about where each of us was going to spend Thanksgiving,” she said. “Everyone piped up and shared where they would be….everyone spoke up but Martha Stewart. There was a very long, noticeable silence in the car. Finally, she said in a whisper, ‘I’ll be spending Thanksgiving alone.’” Sometimes things aren’t always the way they seem!!
This Christmas, what did YOU encounter that was not the way it appeared to others?
A THOUSAND TIMES IN HISTORY A BABY BECOMES A KING. BUT ONLY ONCE IN HISTORY DID A KING BECOME A BABY!
Please check out my new book of poems: A POEM A DAY TO PRAY 2025 https://treatsforthesoul.org/a-poem-a-day-to-pray/