Every Christmas pajama I ever owned was made for Vermont, and I live in Texas. This is the first pair I have ever written a letter about.
Every Christmas pajama I ever owned was made for Vermont, and I live in Texas. This is the first pair I have ever written a letter about.
Six things I have noticed since a 79-degree morning on a cabin porch on the Frio River, from a woman who spent most of it sweating through a reindeer.
Peggy Dalton · Customer · Austin, Texas · 5 min read
Let me tell you who is talking before I tell you anything else. I am Peggy, I am 63, and I live in Austin, Texas, with my husband Frank. I am not a fashion person. I have lived in this state for more than forty years, and I can count on my fingers the Christmas mornings that were cold enough to need a sweater by the time the coffee was done. And yet every December, somebody who loves me hands me a box with thick, fuzzy pajamas in it, with a moose on them.
The ones I am writing about are Christmas pajama sets from Iris and Nora, a small boutique here in Austin that has been quietly dressing women like us for a few years now. Mine is the Astrid, a deep emerald green with little snowy Christmas trees printed all over it. The other one I will tell you about is the Candice, white with red candy canes and little bows, which I bought for my sister Sue. There are seventeen in the collection, and I have looked at every one of them more than once.
Here is how I found them. Last December my daughter and her husband had to be with his people on Christmas Day, so we did ours early. Frank rented two cabins on the Frio River at Concan for the second weekend of the month, and she drove the grandbabies down from Belton. On Sunday morning she wanted the family picture on the porch steps, everybody in their Christmas pajamas, and she had bought me a set for it. Flannel, with a reindeer across the front, thick as a bath mat. By nine o’clock it was 79 degrees. I stood on those steps with my hair stuck to my neck, trying to smile, feeling a trickle go down my back.
Mine, on our back porch in Austin on Christmas morning. It was 74 degrees, and I drank my coffee out there like a person.
Then my grandson’s boot came back. He had left it down by the water, and the woman from the next cabin walked it across the grass to us with her coffee in the other hand. She was about my age, and she had on long green pajamas with little white Christmas trees all over them, with a collar, buttoned up, and she looked as cool and comfortable as if it were April. She looked like she had gotten dressed. Her name, I found out, is Maxine. She handed over the boot, looked at my reindeer, looked at my face, and did not say one word, which was kind of her. So I asked her, plainly.
Two piles
I have been looking at Christmas pajamas for forty years, and what is out there falls into two piles. There is the thick pile, the flannel and the fleece with the reindeer and the moose, which is a lovely idea if you live in Vermont and which, in Texas, you take off the minute the picture has been taken. And there is the giving-up pile, which is what I did most years: a plain cotton nightgown with not one thing about it that says Christmas, and a bathrobe over it when somebody came to the door. So for forty Christmases I chose between being festive and being comfortable.
For forty Christmases I chose between looking like Christmas and being able to breathe. Maxine crossed the grass with a boot and a cup of coffee, and she had both.
The afternoon they came. I laid them out on the bed to look at the trees, and then I put them on and went and stood in the kitchen.
I ordered mine on my phone on the porch steps, still in the reindeer, and I ordered Sue’s the same night. They came the week before Christmas. I wore mine that Christmas morning and all the way to New Year’s, and I got them back out of the drawer as soon as Halloween was over. Going by all those mornings, it comes down to six things, and I will give them to you plainly.
Light enough for a Christmas in Texas
This is the whole thing, really. The boutique describes them as soft and lightweight, and that was what I had never once found in a pair of Christmas pajamas. They are not a bath mat. On a warm morning with the oven going and six people in the kitchen, I am not looking for somewhere to go and take something off. I cannot speak for Vermont. I can speak for Austin in December, and these are the first ones I have left on past breakfast.
We keep the house warm for my husband and I have always roasted in Christmas pajamas. I wore these all day Christmas and never once wanted to change.
Linda H., SabinalSmooth, with nothing to scratch at
The boutique says the feel is smooth and glides over the skin, and that is exactly how I would put it. Flannel grips you. You turn over in the night and it stays where it was. These move when you move, from the couch to the bed and back to the couch, and I have not spent one minute pulling at them. That is not a thing I knew to ask for in pajamas until I had it.
I did not expect to care how pajamas felt, at my age. Now I notice when I am not wearing them.
Connie R., UvaldeA real collar, so you can answer the door
It is a classic pajama, a collared shirt with buttons down the front and a thin red line of piping around the collar and down the edge. That sounds like nothing, and it is the part that made me ask Maxine in the first place. She looked dressed. When the neighbor comes by with a plate of fudge, or the UPS man needs a signature, or my son-in-law is up before I am, I do not go looking for a bathrobe. I just go to the door.
The collar, the red piping and the little green buttons, and the first cinnamon roll, which I am told I do not have to share.
My grown children came for Christmas and my daughter told me I looked nice. In pajamas, at seven in the morning. I will take it.
Beverly S., KnippaRoom to move around in
The boutique calls the fit relaxed, with room to move, lounge and sleep without anything feeling tight, and I would agree with every word. I get down on the floor with the grandbabies, I get back up, slowly, I reach the good platter off the top shelf, and nothing pulls or rides up. They come in S to XL, so check before you order. Long sleeves and long pants, the way a pajama ought to be, only you do not feel as if you are wearing a sleeping bag.
I spent Christmas morning on the floor putting together a dollhouse. Plenty of room, nothing tight, and I still looked decent in the pictures.
Pam K., D’HanisA Christmas print for a grown woman
No moose. There are no antlers and no bells, and nobody has written a joke across the front. The Astrid is little snowy trees on that deep green, with a few small red ones scattered in, and it looks like Christmas without looking like a costume. The Candice is red candy canes, striped candies and little bows on white, which is the sweetest thing I have seen in years and it still looks like it belongs on a woman of sixty. It is all printed right on, and I have looked closely. There are seventeen to choose from, and I went back and forth for quite some time.
Sue, in the Candice, by her tree on Christmas morning. She sent this to me with no message at all, and from Sue, that is a rave.
Mine and Sue’s, side by side on our guest bed, before I had the heart to wrap hers.
I have worn novelty pajamas for my grandchildren for years and hated every picture. These are the first I have asked someone to send me a copy of.
Gail M., TarpleyA present that gets worn, and a picture you will keep
The boutique suggests them for a sister, a mom or a friend, and for festive photos with the family. That has been my year. Sue got the Candice last Christmas and has not stopped mentioning it. This Christmas I have picked the Noelle for my daughter in Belton, who has been handing me reindeer for ten years and is about to learn something. And when she lines us up on the porch steps again, I will be in the Astrid, and I will not be looking for the shade.
I bought three, for my two sisters and for me, and we wore them all on Christmas Eve. Our mother would have thought we had lost our minds, and then asked for a pair.
Rhonda T., BarksdaleThe Astrid and the Candice, against what used to come in the box
You can keep taking off your Christmas pajamas as soon as the picture is taken, like I did. Here is the difference, laid out plainly.
Flannel thick as a bath mat
Off again the minute the picture was taken
A reindeer across the front
A plain nightgown the other 364 days
A bathrobe to answer the door
A soft, lightweight feel
Smooth, and comfortable from the couch to bedtime
A Christmas print a grown woman can wear
A relaxed fit with room to move
A real collar and buttons, so you look put together
About the price
The Astrid is $69.95, and it was $140.00. The Candice is the same, and every set in the collection is half what it was. When I saw that I read the whole page twice looking for the catch. I have not found one. It came with free shipping, it looked like the picture, and I put it on the same afternoon.
Sue’s, in its box on my kitchen table. I left the tag blank. Sue has known my handwriting for sixty years, and she would know who it was from without it.
I will pass on what the boutique told me, which is that these are for the season and the most popular prints go first, mostly well before Christmas. Their words, not mine. What I can tell you from my side is that I have been given a great many Christmas pajamas in my life, and these are the first I have ever gone and bought for myself.
And I do not trust perfect scores, so I read the reviews before I ordered. Just over three hundred of them, sitting at 4.2 stars, which sounded like real women rather than robots. The same six things I have just walked you through come up in them, over and over, in other women’s words.
If you have spent your Christmases too warm, or spent them in a plain nightgown because you were tired of being too warm, this is where I would start. Take a look before the print you want sells through, because once this stock is gone, it is gone. And if you are ever on the Frio in December and you see two grandmothers in Christmas trees on neighboring porches, one of them is Maxine, and the other one is me.
Peggy
THE CHRISTMAS PAJAMA COLLECTION
- 17 Christmas prints, from the green Astrid to the white Candice
- A soft, lightweight feel, smooth on the skin
- Collared, button-front shirt with long sleeves
- Matching long pants in a relaxed fit
- Sizes S to XL
- Free shipping
Sale on now, half off. Once this stock is gone, it is gone.