Golden Banana Bunch Ornament

You can order the Golden Banana Bunch ornament here on the Chive site, where it is stocked year round rather than seasonally. My cousin Roland bought his in March, which he maintains is the correct month to buy anything gold because nobody is competing with you for it. He also buys wrapping paper in March, and batteries. The house is full of March decisions.

It tends to, because a gold object gets treated as the prize of the event whether or not it cost the most. Somebody hands it over, the room reads it as the ceremonial item, and the whole exchange reorganizes around that assumption. Roland has watched this happen twice and finds it very funny that a fruit is doing the work. Gold is persuasive.

It works well as a hostess gift, mostly because it is impossible to misread as an obligation. Roland brings one to houses where he does not know the decorating scheme, on the theory that gold agrees with everything and commits to nothing. He has never had it returned or quietly rehomed. He would notice, because he does a lap. Every time.

Hand-painted glass, blown from clear stock and finished in a metallic gold that goes on last, over a surface worked while the form was still hot. There is no plastic anywhere in it. Roland, who spent a whole autumn spraying household objects gold, examined the ridges and asked how we stopped it pooling in the low spots. Slowly, is the answer.

Not at all — it is 1.38 inches wide and 3.39 inches tall and weighs very little for its size, so an outer branch will hold it without bending. That is where it wants to be anyway, since the gold needs light coming at it from somewhere. Roland put his on the outermost branch he could reach. Then he moved the lamp.

Wrap it in acid-free tissue and store it somewhere with a stable temperature, away from anything that will press against the gold, because metallic finishes mark more easily than painted ones. Roland stores his in the box a watch came in, which is excessive and also effective. He has opinions about the tissue, which he shares at length. I have stopped asking.

Group it with the other metallic and high-shine pieces rather than by what is edible, since the finish is the thing doing the talking. Gold, silver, anything glittered. Roland sorts a tree by surface before he sorts it by anything else, and he claims the reflective pieces should be spread out so they bounce off each other. He may be right.

We ship to whichever address you enter at checkout, so it can go straight to somebody else, but it will arrive as a protective shipping carton rather than as a wrapped present. Roland sent one to his brother this way and rang ahead to explain. His brother had already opened it, which is generally how the call goes. Every year.