It's fitting that Dave McCormack and Dru Thomas kick-start their holiday season each year with a Black Friday trip to Fifth Avenue in New York. Shopping is a favorite pastime, New York City a favorite destination and the unveiling of festive window displays at stores like Saks, Bergdorf Goodman and Tiffany's is a ritual with special significance, since the pair has a history in window design.
Standing on a crowded sidewalk, gazing in at the colorful, glitzy displays and twinkling lights can be mesmerizing, McCormack says: “You get a magical feeling for a little while.”
That feeling may be part of the reason why he and Thomas have continued to make holiday decorating a big part of their personal and professional lives long after they abandoned Manhattan for the Christmas City, and began focusing on designing hair instead of windows. Their Bethlehem business, American Hairlines, is known year-round for its exceptional service, and at the holidays, for its over-the-top and ever-changing decorations. Each year brings a completely new look, from giant glittery reindeer to polar bears floating down a snowy mountain to a Christmas-themed circus. “One year we had a list of naughty and nice people,” McCormack says. “That was fun.”
“Most new homes don't have original woodwork or beautiful stained glass windows. This house has built-in character.”
The festive displays inevitably lead to actual festivities, since the pair have a large roster of clients and friends and love to entertain. They began what became an annual tradition of hosting the Christmas holidays in 1996, when they invited all their American Hairlines clients to their home above the salon. “We had just moved here and had no idea how big our business was,” McCormack recalls. “There wasn't enough room for everyone.”
They would soon solve that particular problem. McCormack, who grew up in the Lehigh Valley, often jogged from his business in Downtown Bethlehem to the West End of Allentown. Along his route was an old Greek Revival-style Victorian home with a for-sale sign out front. “It was on the market for a long time,” he recalls. “It needed a lot of work.” But as he kept passing it by, he started to fall in love with it despite its flaws. The building, circa 1899, had started out as the rectory of a church across the street, and it retained its unique architectural detailing after being converted into a home in the early part of the 20th century.
“It's all about the details and alcoves and nooks and crannies you don't get in a new home,” McCormack says. “Most new homes don't have original woodwork or beautiful stained glass windows. This house has built-in character.”
Luckily, it had good bones, too, and most of the work that needed to be done was cosmetic. “We're always changing it,” McCormack says. “We both like to play. And our house is our hobby.”
But that attention to detail in design by no means makes the home any less practical. “It's a beautiful home but we live in it,” McCormack says—and “we” includes Hugo and Moonie, their two German shepherd-basset hound-sheltie mixes. “It's a very social home. We have a lot of guests, and animals, and kids and parties.”
Twists on Decor
However elaborate the dinners with friends and charity events McCormack and Thomas host during the year, they can't compare with the main event in December. “The Christmas season in the Northeast is my favorite time,” McCormack says. And they celebrate at home in as big a way as they do at the salon, hosting a traditional Christmas Eve party for 50 to 60 of their closest family and friends, and a more formal dinner on Christmas Day.
Each year brings a new décor scheme, completely unique from whatever they do at the salon (although they definitely borrow from a communal stash of mercury glass, string lights and other baubles). “The decorating that we do in our home is more personal,” McCormack says.
“Our house is very traditional so we do a lot of traditional things, but we like to add a little twist to it every year.”
Of course that “twist” could be anything from live greens, red ribbons and silk Christmas balls, to Mardi Gras-bright mercury glass and feathers. Not to mention the special effects: “We do have a snow machine,” says McCormack, bringing up the year they went with a vintage ski lodge theme using lots of hanging crystal balls.
One of the few constants is the attic—yes, they even decorate the attic—where the eaves are swathed in different colored fabrics to resemble a giant tent or, as McCormack says, “the inside of a genie's bottle.” “We try to make it feel as warm and comfortable and fun as possible because holidays should be fun,” McCormack says.
Each year brings a new décor scheme, completely unique from whatever they do at the salon...
Downstairs, the winding staircase banister in the foyer begging for boughs of holly and a bay window in the living room that “always looks like it should have a Christmas tree in it,” according to McCormack, set a more traditional holiday scene. There's no question of filling every branch of the towering, nine-foot fir (which they handpick every year themselves) because between them, McCormack and Thomas have amassed thousands of ornaments, most of them gifts or mementos they've picked up on their travels. “We've gotten ornaments from Paris, Venice, California, Hawaii. Wherever we've been, we try to collect something from that area to bring back and put on the tree to remind us of that trip,” McCormack says. “We know where every one came from and its history.”
After 18 years of scouring flea markets and carefully editing the art, antiques and other objects in their house, McCormack says, “We're not so much collectors anymore since we have everything we want now.” Ornaments are the one shining exception. “It's probably something we'll always do,” he acknowledges.
Twinkling strands of light make the tree a centerpiece even from the street, where it's showcased in the bay window next to the wraparound porch. “Lighting is probably the biggest mistake people make,” McCormack says. “They either underlight or overlight or show too much wire.” His solution is to borrow a standard piece of fashion advice: “You know how they say that when you get dressed, just when you think you're ready to walk out the door you should remove one accessory and then you're done? That's how you should treat your holiday lighting. When you think you're done, take away one strand of lights and it will be perfect.”
The tree is ideally positioned to throw its glinting beauty on a fantastic mirrored armoire in the foyer that was made by an artisan friend, Christi Garton. “She took an old armoire, covered it in rhinestones and hand-painted in between with silver paint,” McCormack says. “Even the back is covered in mirror.” The effect is amplified tenfold when the decorations are up, and in the gleaming reflection of the mirrored pieces, “It's pretty much Christmas wherever you look,” McCormack says.
Merry and Bright
After the tree, the dining room is the most iconic holiday tableau. The chairs—each a different colored floor sample purchased from the old Wanamaker's in Philadelphia—are moved out for the big Christmas Eve bash, which is served buffet-style, and returned the next day for a more formal sit-down dinner. The long wood table, which was handmade by friend and Allentown artist and furniture designer Andrew Fiscus, gets the full treatment with table decorations and centerpieces in the year's theme. “Some people put the same thing in the same place year to year. We do that with some things but we like to experiment,” McCormack says. “That way it feels fresh.”
This year, that theme was reminiscent of Carnival with large gleaming mercury glass globes—a string of which hangs from a soffit in one of the room's windows—glittery Mardi Gras-style masks and brightly colored feathers for centerpieces. “It was kind of like a holiday royalty feeling, with red ribbons and these giant globes on the chandelier,” McCormack says. “My main focus was to make the chandelier huge.”
The colors—purple, red and blue—aren't traditional Christmas hues, but they are part of McCormack and Thomas' personal tradition of decorating with lots and lots and lots of color. “We love color,” McCormack says. “I tend to like darker reds like maroon, but we might do white one year and gold the next.”
Amid this splendor, McCormack and Thomas recall some of their most magical holiday memories. “We've had these perfect Christmas moments where people got here just before a snowstorm hit and everything started to turn white,” Thomas says. And for his part, one of McCormack's favorite times during the entire celebration is Christmas Eve, when everyone is gathered together and all the presents have been passed out and opened. “There's about a 15-minute window where you have a breath before everyone starts passing presents and eating food and I think that's my favorite part,” he says.
The colors—purple, red and blue—aren't traditional Christmas hues, but they are part of McCormack and Thomas' personal tradition of decorating with lots and lots and lots of color.
After the night's festivities, the table is set with formal china place settings—“You've got to put out the best stuff at the holidays,” McCormack says—for the family's Christmas Day meal.
But before those guests arrive, the couple has their own quiet early morning celebration in the kitchen. On thing the house lacks is a fireplace (“It kills me every year,” Thomas says), so they hang their stockings in the kitchen, usually at the window or on chairs, and open them while sipping coffee before moving on to unwrapping gifts under the tree. It's a peaceful moment amid the happy chaos of entertaining a houseful of friends, kids and pets that they've come to love.
In fact, they start planning each year's new holiday theme as early as October, in preparation for getting boxes of decorations out of storage, cleaning and hanging them. After more than 18 years, they've got the routine down pretty pat, but the planning is still part of the fun. The end result doesn't always turn out quite how they expected it to, but it's always something different and joyful. “We're always looking for something that makes people go, ‘Wow' because they expect it now,” McCormack says. “They can't wait to see what we're doing. And we can't really wait either.”
