A festoon (from French feston, Italian festone, from a Late Latin festo, originally a festal garland, Latin festum, feast) is a wreath or garland hanging from two points, and in architecture typically a carved ornament depicting conventional arrangement of flowers, foliage or fruit bound together and suspended by ribbons. The motif is sometimes known as a swag when depicting fabric or linen.
In modern English the verb forms, especially "festooned with", are often used very loosely or figuratively to mean having any type of fancy decoration or covering.
"All human memory is suspect".
"Or that's how I remember it. Human recall is notoriously bad."
Which is just as silly.
I like the word 'festoon'. It's like 'Andromeda', 'ethereal', 'aurora' and 'denouement'. Nice to roll around your tongue like a toffee or caramel.
'Festoon' is a word often associated with Christmas...
... with Christmas lights festooning houses, lounges and shopping malls.
Not a lot of 'festooning' goes on at our house though as we long ago forewent Christmas decorations, Christmas trees and Christmas cards.
This thought was brought on by the fact that we received a Christmas card today - from The Old Girl's cousin in Aberdeen. It brings the total number of Christmas cards this year to - one - and takes pride of place in the lounge which is as festive or 'festooned' as it will get.
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| Our Christmas card taking pride of place on the mantlepiece. |
No longer do we have Venetian blinds dripping with cards which is good as, since we very rarely sent any out, takes away any guilt feelings. The Old Girl's cousin still sends a card each year though and a Scottish calendar knowing that Hell will freeze over before she gets one in return.
Talking of things of Christmas past, this year we haven't seen the traditional Christmas Letter from Richard. Mind you, Aesop's Fables told us to be careful of what we wish for so maybe I shouldn't have woken that beast.
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Taken care of.
Oh dear.
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