About fifteen years ago, when Sevda and I were roommates, she introduced me to the pomander ball.  She told me that it was a tradition to make them at her house around Christmas.  Not long after she mentioned it, several containers of cloves showed up at our house, sent all the way from Turkey in a package from her mama.  Sevda showed me how to use a fork to make a neat line of holes in an orange, fill each hole with a clove, and keep on going until the whole orange was filled.  I sat down with my orange and fork and pile of cloves and went to work.  It wasn't until my thumb was throbbing with pain from poking the sharp cloves into the orange that I looked up and noticed that she'd abandoned the job in favor of hanging out and chatting and drinking wine as I got the job done.  This was the second lesson of the pomander - you only have to do it until you pass the job onto someone else.

So, for fifteen years it's been my job and each year I've made a few more.  Once dried, the pomander is cured and can be saved from year to year.  Once in awhile moisture causes trouble and it may get moldy and has to be tossed.  But it's okay, because there are always a few new ones to take their place.


It's tempting to make a pattern that does not fill the entire orange.  It feels very Martha to make a pattern leaves a lot of the orange showing, but they will not stay pretty for very long.  After a few days, they look misshapen and start to smell, and not in a good way.  So if you're only going to use them as a decoration for a few days, go ahead, Martha away.  But if you want to keep the proof of your efforts for much longer than that, fill it up, baby.


For the past two years, I've tried to hand off the pomander job like a holiday relay, but no one has taken the clove baton.  Martin shows some promise, but so far, his attention span is limited to just a few rows.  Plus, I feel kind of like I'm promoting Child Christmas Labor when I start to say things like "Oh, your thumbs can't hurt that bad!  Get back to work!  Santa's watching, you know."