by Masten Dahl

Created on: January 01, 2009

Perhaps no other holiday conveys style and elegance like New Years. Unlike most other major holidays, New Year's doesnt require a mascot or a character to serve as a theme; there is no need to incorporate snowmen, bunnies, pumpkins, or leprechauns. New Year's Eve, as well as New Year's Day, is an "adult"holiday; a festival for the grown-ups after all the Christmas toys have been handed out and all the fruitcake has been...well, whatever it is that one does with holiday fruitcake.

The fact that New Year's Eve is a nighttime celebration makes it the perfect opportunity to create a table that is elegant. Elegance and New Year's go together like peanut butter and jelly, unlike some holidays. It's quite hard to be elegant during Independence Day, for example.

So now that youve decided to be elegant, we must decide what constitutes elegance. The easiest place to start is with color. New Year's colors should be more mature than colors for Halloween or Christmas. Colors such as silver, burgundy, emerald green, purple, and deep blue are perfect New Year's colors, and should serve as the foundation for a dinner table. A nighttime celebration demands colors that are deep and rich, rather than bright and cheerful.

My family has always used a dark green tablecloth for New Years Eve dinners for as long as I can remember. This darker color makes a wonderful contrast to the sparkling silverware. Silver always looks best against a darker color. The natural beauty of sterling silver can be easily lost if the tablecloth and napkins are light-colored. The same philosophy applies to the crystal stemware which many people favor for this holiday.

Silver and crystal are perfect materials with which to decorate your New Year's table. Simple yet elegant, crystal and silver reflect a timeless beauty that perfectly captures the feeling of the season. For this reason, nothing beats a classic silver candelabra for a centerpiece. Add white tapers to the candelabra and you have the very definition of elegance. A candelabra can look downright oodd by itself, so its always a good idea to arrange some holly or pine boughs around the base.

Even though your goal is to make your New year's Eve table elegant, it doesn't hurt to add a few "homey" features to the table. My favorite is a silver bowl filled with an assortment of nuts, sich as walnuts, hazelnuts, and pecans. A traditional hand-painted wooden nutcracker is also a nice touch. Just remember that you don't want to go overboard when adding these "homey" touches to your table setting. When it comes to simple elegance, less is often more!

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