My First Christmas Pomander in 30 Years - December 2025

A Christmas-craft memory from my childhood is making pomanders with oranges and whole cloves.  Almost every Christmas, my Mom would sit us down in front of the tv with a couple of toothpicks, a bowl of large oranges and a tin of whole cloves.  Then, there were no rules...other than just jam in the cloves in a pattern of your choice.

After coming across Pomander-Tok recently, I looked in our spice rack and discovered that he had a tin of whole cloves.  And, we also had an orange in the fridge.  So, off I went...making my first orange and clove pomander in at least 30 years.  

Here's a link to a Google SERP for Pomanders that includes this description:

I started simple design-wise - with a plain criss-cross of cloves at both equators up-and-down and side-to-side.  Here's my first pomander with this simple design:

When I was a kid, my Mom just took all of our oranges that had been studded with cloves and put them in a bowl on the coffee table (or...as she called it our "cocktail table").  

But, in looking around on the Web about Pomanders (and watching some videos on Pomander-Tok), there's a number of people who are recommending that you put the oranges in a brown paper bag to 'dry out' for a number of weeks before displaying.

That part (the drying out in a bag) is ALSO in the Google Gemini step-by-step snippet.  See below for screenshot:

There's talk online of using this drying period to avoid rot.  But, I don't remember ours having any trouble with rotting?  Perhaps it's because we live in a cold climate and are running forced-air heat all Winter, which dries out EVERYTHING in the house?  

I'm not sure, but I'm going to try the drying-in-the-bag trick.  See below for a peek at my orange pomander tucked into a brown paper bag:

I'll leave it in here for 10 days, then pick it up and see how much weight it has lost.  I'll also get my kids to make even more of these and we'll put some out directly to see if there's any difference.