Collected Cheer

RENEE KNOWLES' parents are Greek, and they did not have much of a Christmas there. When her mother came to America, her aunt told her mother what to do for the holiday. So she did that: one tree, some silver tinsel. Very simple.

That was then. This is now. And this is how Knowles unwraps Christmas in the Innis Arden household she shares with her husband, Ron. All out. On Dasher, on Dancer, on snowpeople, on Santas and on anybody else who can add to the festivities.

The only simple thing about Christmas here is that it is simply elegant. Even with three trees, hundreds of ornaments, a fragile avalanche of crystal icicles, decades of knickknacks, miles of bows and piles of stuffed and fluffy creatures.

"I pretty much have to put every other knickknack I have away," says Knowles. "It's gotten bigger and bigger."

A grand dame of a tree dripping with crystal, gold and silver greets visitors inside the front door just off the living room. Across from it hangs the Thomas Kinkaid painting "Christmas Eve."

The dining room is festooned with golden topiary and glittery golden candles in big bell jars. A wreath that hangs over the mirror brightens the room in white and crystals.

In the family room stands the "fruit tree," an evergreen heavy with crystallized glass grapes, pears, apples, bananas and more. Thomas Kincaid's "Old Porterfield Gift Shoppe," a nod to Knowles' former job at I. Magnin, hangs over the fireplace. All the surrounding shelves hold holiday spirit in figurines and greenery.

A peaceful tall flocked tree in subtle creams and whites is a forest of one in the peaceful master bedroom. Even the bathrooms get in the spirit with tall root-beer-colored candles set on a gold charger in the master, and a whimsical country Christmas candle chandelier in another bathroom. Casper, the cat, has her own Christmas rug, which sits in front of her bed and next to the scratching post.

Spode Christmas Tree china service for eight sits at the ready, waiting for the Knowles' traditional Christmas Eve family dinner, which will require every bit of the china.

All together it looks like a set for a proper Christmas movie.

Knowles will tell you that she doesn't know what she's doing. Says what she's collected is just "a hodgepodge of stuff that I like." But that's not quite true. She was, at one time, a fine-housewares professional.

"It started when I worked in the gift department at I. Magnin," she says. "That was a bad place to put me."

After the store closed in January 1995, Knowles, in kind of a mourning for the dear departed store, stopped collecting the fine crystal and exquisite ornaments. But she missed it. So the hunt for the annual ornament from Baccarat and Waterford resumes, the collection of Lenox Christmas plates grows taller, and the Woof & Poof stuffed-creature population swells.

Each year the Knowleses spend Thanksgiving weekend in Whistler, B.C., with friends. Ron sets up the bare trees before they leave. When they return, it takes Renee a week and a half to decorate.

"I love to shop for it," she says, setting the phone back in the receiver. (Her sister in Everett has just called with word of a lovely wooden snowflake ornament. She snagged 10 for Knowles.) "I help my girlfriends, too, but I just do it for fun."

When she is finished decorating, Knowles' house is the very bosom of Christmas: welcoming, fun, warm and delicious. But her past is never very far behind her.

"My sister bakes all the American cookies, and I make the Greek pastries," she says, offering up a hot cup of coffee and a perfect holiday plateful of baklava, melomakárona (honey cookies) and kourabiéthes (butter cookies).

Rebecca Teagarden is assistant editor of Pacific Northwest magazine. Mike Siegel is a Seattle Times staff photographer.