By MAGGIE GALEHOUSE HOUSTON CHRONICLE
A hurricane and a recession could easily spread a serious case of the bah, humbugs this season.
But not for the Christmas fanatics. For these self-taught decorators who transform their homes into holiday havens thick with Santas, ornaments and things that go blink in the night, Christmas always arrives early and stays late.
A tale of two Michaels
For every Christmas addict there is an enabler. And between the months of October and December, this pretty much describes Michael Briden and Mike Lowery.
“I have the inspiration, and he has the installation,” Briden deadpans.
Briden is the collector, favoring glass ornaments by Christopher Radko and Santa figurines by Brian Kidwell and Jim Shore. He decorates each of the holiday trees in the Heights bungalow he and Lowery share — no small job, since there’s at least one tree in every downstairs room.
Lowery does the traditional “dad” jobs: hangs garland around the window frames, puts the toppers on each tree before Briden starts to decorate, picks up ornaments on his way home from hunting and fishing trips.
Every year, the two transform their handsome bungalow with sage green walls into a holiday wonderland where first-time guests are hard-pressed to focus on anything but the dé cor. As Lowery says, “Christmas has definitely exploded in this house.”
It helps that the pair co-own Another Place in Time, a garden center in the Heights that sells some of the decorative items and ornaments Briden collects.
Briden, who is also a loan operations manager at Integrity Bank, admits that he is particular about the quality and presentation of his collections.
He likes his Santas to look friendly, not scary. He enjoys creating new vignettes with his Christmas ornaments; this year, Santa’s Sweet Shop appears in his kitchen window, with a jar of gingerbread men and cookies and glass candies. And each of his Christmas trees has a theme, from the hunting and fishing tree in Lowery’s room, to the Grinch tree in the bathroom, to the slim and showy “Feathered Friends” tree in the family room.
The show-stopper is “The Night Before Christmas” tree, which gathers Santas, reindeers, gifts and all the usual Christmas Eve suspects.
When one goes to so much trouble to create a Christmas atmosphere, it’s a shame not to share it. Briden estimates that he and Lowery host half a dozen social gatherings every December so that friends can see the house.
As thrilled as Briden is with this year’s décor, he is always in the market for something new. Gazing at his animal tree, he ticks off the rarer ornaments that adorn it. A buffalo. A rhinoceros. A skunk. A giraffe. But he can’t help but notice what he’s missing.
“I don’t have a platypus,” Briden says, “and I don’t have any dinosaurs.”
The holiday decorating gene is strong with Jennifer Emshoff. Growing up in Klein with a mother who’s a part-time interior designer, she learned early that every holiday deserves festive dé cor and special dishes.
So when Emshoff, a senior contract analyst with El Paso Exploration & Production, moved into her Eastwood bungalow in 2001, it was a fait accompli that the holidays would be well-represented.
Her Christmas decorating schedule begins the day after Thanksgiving at her childhood home, when her mom starts pulling out her own Christmas finery. Emshoff is always on hand to assist.
“I give her all day Friday,” she says, “then I come back and start working on my own house. It takes two full days for the inside and then a night to put up the lights on the outside.”
This year presented a new challenge for Emshoff, who recently transformed her bright blue and yellow living space into a richer, ranchy style, with dark leather and rustic touches. This meant a new backdrop for Christmas.
Dominating the living room is a full-size white tree with shiny, multicolored ornaments, many with a Texas theme. On the floor of the dining room, ranch meets Christmas in a pair of ceramic cowboy boots stuffed with holly and red berries. The formal dining table is set for Christmas dinner and a long kitchen counter that usually serves as the bar has become a winter village.
Off season, Emshoff’s Christmas stuff lives in a small attic closet crammed with 15 tubs of decorations and enough bags, she estimates, to fill another seven tubs.
“It’s jampacked,” Emshoff says. “I have Easter, then Valentine’s and Thanksgiving and October all in the front. Christmas is all toward the back.”
As a point of reference, her mother, Pat Bracewell, has 65 tubs of holiday decorations in an extra attic her husband built especially to house them. For Emshoff, the bar has been set rather high.
To fully appreciate the Christmas room in Jane Block’s Memorial home, one must understand the way her beloved late husband, Ralph, chose to live.
“Ralph was an avid collector of many things, but he didn’t like to keep any of his collections or possessions boxed away,” explained Block, a Realtor. Instead, Ralph wanted everything out and on display. Walls, shelves, tables, mantles, corners, even ceilings were fair game.
Hence, the butterfly bathroom; the sword room, which was also Ralph’s office; and, upstairs, the Christmas room — 1,500 square feet of staggering holiday spirit.
Better to call it Christmas World, a magical place where 1970s furnishings fade into a sea of holiday cheer that has every icon covered: a fireplace, full-size and miniature trees with blinking lights, nutcrackers, bells, ornaments, rocking horses, cards, Santa figurines, wreaths, angels, teddy bears, reindeers and one entire corner covered in Christmassy pine tree wallpaper.
“You have to be an airline pilot to figure out all the lights and buttons,” said Block, lifting a tangle of chords in a particularly busy corner. “Sometimes we find ‘em, sometimes we don’t.”
For more than 30 years, the Blocks opened their home every December, eventually joining forces with Toys for Tots and asking visitors to donate unwrapped presents to the needy.
The kids always loved to see the Marines in uniform when they arrived to pack up the donated toys, Block said.
In 2002, the year before Ralph died, the couple had 650 people through the house over a 12-hour period. Outside, lit trees, mechanical figures and manger scenes were set up on the roof, along with displays behind glass along the outside fence, a la department store windows. A lot of those decorations are up this year, too.
Jane Block doesn’t host the big Toys for Tots event anymore.
But this year, she’s dusting off the Christmas room for a neighborhood open house. And she can’t help but laugh as she recalls a conversation with her husband more then three decades ago.
The couple had decided to build an addition onto their one-story home. Jane was thrilled that Ralph was planning a large new space upstairs and told him it would be a perfect master bedroom.
“Oh no,” said Ralph, cheerfully. “It’s going to be the Christmas room.”
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