Fancy Holiday Tables

It is very trendy to declare “you eat with your eyes too”. Like this is a new concept, and then one could throw around the phrase “platescape” to prove that you know what you are talking about. I have always known this because when I was young, any holiday table was set hours before the meal. A work of art, a blank canvas, an opportunity to express one’s inner artist.
I recently found a picture of myself sitting at a Thanksgiving table. This was before the mob scene that Thanksgiving in Connecticut turned into. The table is set for six people but I am in a highchair so it was B.P. (before Peter) and I imagine the sixth seat was for my Grandma or one of my Mother’s many brothers. It’s black and white and overexposed but I know everything on the table.
First a red table cloth, then a lace one on top of it. I know it was stained and had some holes in it because serving platters and decorations had to be artfully placed to cover them. Cloth napkins that were freshly pressed and I think gray in color and made of linen. Cloth napkins used to be the sign of a really fancy meal and now they are de rigueur (I know, it’s a really pretentious phrase). The silver and white “Good China” (I don’t think anyone has good china anymore, maybe my sister) is on the table and also the good silverware. It was usually a production a week before any holiday of polishing the “Good Silver”. The smell of Gorham silver polish is very sense memory for me.
I also see in the picture dark purple water goblets at every setting, even at mine regardless of the fact that I’m in a high chair. I thought everyone grew up with water goblets at family dinners. There are also wine glasses at 3 of the place settings. They are the wine glasses of mythic reputation because they have a band of platinum around the rim and were referred to as the “Bishop Glasses”. I never knew why but I knew it made them super special. There is a plate of crudités and although I can’t see it I know there is a plate of olives and fancy crystal salt and pepper shakers. There is a turkey, way outrageously to big for 6 people at the head of the table because we did the Norman Rockwell thing when my father carved at the head of the table (electric carving knife). There is an autumnal centerpiece and I think it’s in an actual wicker cornucopia and candlesticks also in some of that freshly polished silver. My favorite thing that I can make out on the table is the bottle of Leibfraumilch. It was the white wine that made my parents go all dreamy eyed as they thought back to their time in Germany.You can’t see it in the picture but I know just to the left is a side board was an apple, pumpkin, pecan and mincemeat pie. My Grandma made the mincemeat, which is a nasty mess of a dessert pie with meat and lard in it, and she always wrote a “T” and an “M” in the top pie crust (Tis’ Mince….go figure).
This little picture tells me so much and reminds me why I always feel compelled to capture any image of food. I hope that perhaps in 25-ish years, someone could look at a picture I took and get so much out of it (mine will be bigger and not overexposed).