Deck the halls
As you dig out the baubles, lights and tinsel from the attic, Caroline Roope reveals how our ancestors decorated their houses for Christmas
Whether you’re a fan of sparkly tinsel or prefer the natural look of holly and ivy, Christmas often heralds a frenzy of festive decoration. Homes, offices and streets across the country are transformed as part of our celebrations. While a 21st-century Christmas usually involves mass-produced ornaments and reels of electricitydraining fairy lights, it is perhaps surprising to learn that our ancestors decorated their homes in much the same way as we do now, albeit with different materials. Like us, they would have followed time-honoured traditions while incorporating new trends, depending on what was readily available.
Our pagan forebears would have decorated their homes using whatever natural foliage was to hand, such as firs, holly and ivy. The act of ‘bringing the outside in’ would remind them that life would return in the spring, and fill the home with a pleasant evergreen smell.
Over time, these natural decorations became more sophisticated and more thought was put into their arrangement.
As a result, swags, garlands and wreaths became the main form of decoration for much of the Middle Ages. According to John Stow’s A Survay of London (1598) it was the custom for homes to be “decked with holm, ivy, bays and whatsoever the season of the year afforded to be
green” (a 1603 edition is online at britishhistory.ac.uk/no-series/ survey-of-london-stow/1603). The 16th and 17th centuries saw the introduction of edible treats as well as ‘kissing boughs’. These were made from two overlapping hoops of foliage hung from the ceiling and decorated with oranges, nuts, ribbons and mistletoe. Centrepieces made of ‘marchpane’ (marzipan) and gold leaf adorned the wealthiest tables, as well as baskets of walnuts, fruits and candles. But the hiatus to festive celebrations brought about by the Puritans from 1644 to 1660 meant that the trappings of Christmas were all but banned, although some flouted the edict.
Modesty was key in Georgian and Regency periods, and decorations were simplified to unadorned spruce, holly and ivy wound around fireplaces and staircases. Often a pineapple was displayed as a centrepiece. The exotic fruit was so perishable and expensive that it became a symbol of luxury as well as propriety.
Royal Revolution
The vision of Christmas that we know today arrived in the 19th century. Before Queen Victoria’s reign, Christmas trees were a
small tabletop decoration, but in 1848 an illustration of the Royal family with a Christmas tree centrepiece was printed in the Illustrated London News. This introduced the idea of family as central to the celebrations and for the first time Christmas had a place in all homes – even the poorest families would have felt encouraged to display some ivy and hang a basic paper chain.
For middle-class and wealthier families, the availability of money and an increase in leisure time meant that handmade decorations with festive mottos or biblical quotations were commonplace. Newspapers published articles to assist those attempting handcrafted designs, including this one from The Star in Guernsey in 1889: “For the decoration of the hall, which may be regarded as a point of welcome, a frieze can sometimes be added… This should be made of tectorial or of Burnet’s leather-cloth. It should have a border of holly leaves, three deep, sewn on bands of brown paper and fixed to the edges of the material. Appropriate words should be painted or stencilled on the cloth… Bamboo stands should hold jars tilled with evergreens of all sorts. In the dining-room a motto could be placed over the sideboards.” Poorer families would have used old newspapers to create bunting, and strung it around the home.
Festive Warmth
Decorations often centred on the fireplace; it provided not only a warm area where people could congregate but also light to illuminate the decorations. Candles were a staple part of the celebrations, but their use didn’t come without risk. This also extended to the use of gas lamps, and several tragic stories are to be found on britishnewspaperarchive. co.uk relating to decoration fires. Even putting up and taking down the decorations came with a degree of danger. The Hull Daily Mail reports in 1909 a successful compensation case at Liverpool County Court whereby “Alice Gordon, an elderly widow, claimed compensation at 9s a week in respect of injuries
‘Even the poorest families would have felt encouraged to display ivy and hang a basic paper chain’
received by falling from a ladder and dislocating her ankle whilst removing Christmas decorations from the house of her employer”.
Tallow candles would have been used by the poorest families as a cheaper alternative to wax. These were made from animal fat, so the candles produced an unpleasant aroma and a lot of smoke. Candles would also have been used to decorate the tree, as well as edible treats such as apples, pears and sweets. The growth of urban areas in the 19th century paved the way for rogue traders to capitalise on providing foliage to city dwellers who couldn’t collect their own festive greenery. An account in the Essex Herald from 1834 tells of “the greatest havock” being committed “upon the pleasure grounds of Mr Hall Dare, by persons coming from London to cut his shrubs for Christmas decorations”.
New manufacturing and transportation methods in the later Victorian era meant that Germanic beads and baubles began to be mass-produced and shipped to other countries. By the 1880s glass ornaments were all the rage, and baubles were starting to replace the fruit used to adorn the tree. These shopbought items
supplemented homemade decorations in wealthier homes. Department stores such as Liberty of London, and later Selfridges, showcased new products from the Continent and as far afield as Japan. Even the smaller familyowned shops embraced the mania for Christmas, boasting windows full of “thousands of clever Japanese toys and novelties”
( The Citizen, 1897).
In the Edwardian period, decorating outside the home became commonplace – civic buildings such as schools, hospitals and town halls were all treated to some festive finery. Within the home, dado and picture rails would have been dressed with running garlands, and seasonal greenery was still in evidence. In the posthumous Village Christmas and Other Notes on the English Year (2015) Laurie Lee paints a nostalgic picture of Christmases past in the early part of the 20th century: “Now the time had come for us to go up the woods and collect leaves for decorating the house. Among the black and bare trees we shook the snow from the undergrowth with frost-reddened fingers, seeking the sharp-spiked holly, bunches of laurel and ivy, cold clusters of moon-pale mistletoe.” Stores also leant on the romance and nostalgia of Christmas – decorations featured birds, mice and sugar plums.
Unsurprisingly, the outbreak of the First World War saw a drop in sales of German ornaments. As the century progressed into the 1920s and 1930s, developments in technology and manufacture saw the widespread use of electric Christmas lights. The invention of artificial trees and greenery meant decorations could be put up earlier and lasted longer.
This period was the first in which the middle classes were without domestic help and many families lived in flats and mansion blocks, so not having to carry a real tree upstairs or pick up pine needles must have been very attractive. The Taunton Courier and Western Advertiser in 1938 reports on the “gaiety in the home at Christmas time… Paper decorations can be bought for a few pence, and they help to make the house look very pretty and gay. There are all kinds of attractive tinsel things, too, imitation mistletoe and holly leaves with red berries.”
‘Stores leant on the romance and nostalgia of Christmas’
High-Street Bargains
By the 1950s plastic ornaments and decorations were sold cheaply via the Woolworths stores on many high streets (see box, page 72). Stockings, snowmen and Santas all became features of the Christmas celebrations, and are still going strong today.
Despite the fact that Christmas is a pastiche of customs, which have been moulded, reshaped and added to for centuries, there is something comforting in the idea that our ancestors’ decorations were not too dissimilar to our own – although perhaps it is a good thing that lit candles on the tree are a thing of the past.