My St. Barbara bouquet...

It's not working. The pear tree branches that I picked for a St. Barbara bouquet (see December 3rd's mooding on Christmas decorations) are not even thinking about budding, leafing out, or blossoming. My kids tell me that I tried this once years ago with branches from a crabapple tree, and nothing happened then, either, but that episode doesn't register in my brain at all.

So I went online to see if the German friend who told me about spring blossoms for Christmas was stringing me a line. I found the following:

Branches from a fruit tree or flowering shrub cut on St. Barbara's Day (December 4) and kept in water in a warm room will flower by Christmas. This is known as a St. Barbara's bouquet in Germany (p. 126).    

In Saints: A Visual Guide by Edward and Lorna Mornin (2006, Francis Lincoln, ISBN 139780711226067. Found under Google Books.)

Maybe our Canadian fruit trees work differently than German ones. Maybe my room isn't warm enough for the branches to bud out. Maybe a St. Barbara bouquet only blooms in Santa Barbara where there can be blossoms all year round. In a culture that has pretty much forsaken Saints for celebrities, I doubt there's anyone who does this regularly anymore. St. Barbara herself was taken off the Catholic liturgical calendar in 1969, and I suspect the generations who made her bouquets are fading away. But if you've kept the tradition alive, or you know people who make St. Barbara bouquets regularly with success, please let me know.

The failure of my St. Barbara bouquet doesn't really matter, though I would have loved to have those pear blossoms at Christmas. At the moment, our house is decorated with a simple Christmas tree and a pretty happy family. What more do we need?