HOMES OF CHRISTMAS PAST
In the 18th and 19th centuries, Christmas was celebrated simply. Handmade ornaments were the standard instead of today’s massproduced baubles and twinkling light strands.
Connecticut historic homes open to the public strive for historical accuracy when decorating for Christmas but also pay heed to what people expect to see. It’s a carefully curated process beginning before Thanksgiving. Curators mined original or periodstyle items from their collections, bought items at antique shops and added real or artificial greenery to create festive scenes representative of the time period each house represents. Many have tours and special events throughout December.
Catherine Prescott, chief curator and assistant museum director at Ridgefield’s Keeler Tavern Museum and History Center, said they interpret three centuries in its displays with each period having different Christmas traditions yet people expect to see winter decorations throughout the museum.
“In 18th century New England, Christmas was not really celebrated as a major holiday...and there was typically not much decoration. By the mid-19th century, Christmas was becoming more widely celebrated,” she said. “It wasn’t until the turn of the 20th century that the ‘traditional’ American Christmas — more commercialized than religious — came about.”
The Mark Twain House & Museum in Hartford, which Samuel Clemens and his wife, Olivia, moved into in 1874, is decorated as if its famous residents still lived here. Jodi C. DeBruyne, the director of collections, explained the Christmas decorations are based on letters and documentation of how the house looked in the Clemenses’ time. “We know some of the gifts they gave each other or were from other family members,” she said.
Letters also yielded clues for the Greenwich Historical Society, which decorates the circa-1730 Bush-Holley House inside and out. The dining room features a table laden with holiday dishes and decorations directly inspired by the holiday meals that boardinghouse hostess Emma Constant Holley MacRae described in her letters. Maggie Dimock, the Greenwich Historical Society’s curator of exhibitions and collections, said they pored through these letters and sourced items to reflect the type of decorations on display. Many of the holiday
decorations are antique or period appropriate.
Some houses are interpreted in a wholly different time period, however. The Weston History and Culture Center decorated its circa-1841 David Dimon Coley House a full century later. “Since reopening the Coley House last year, after five long years of restoration work, we decided to decorate the home to reflect a World War II homefront Christmas. This will be our second year decorating the home in a 1940s holiday style,” the center’s executive director Samantha Fargione said. She and staff used 1940s copies of “Good Housekeeping,” “Better Homes & Gardens” and the Sears Roebuck catalog to research what holiday decor would have been in style and available during the war.
The decorations in these homes range from modest to ornate. The grand Bush-Holley house makes quite a visual statement with its two-story porches trimmed in evergreen garlands. Inside, decorations are reminiscent of the time the Bush family lived there from the 1750s through 1844 as well as the Holley family, who took it over as a boarding house in the 1880s. Dimock said this dual interpretation highlights how Christmas was celebrated at different times. The Holley era rooms are lively compared to the restrained style of decoration in the Bush rooms that was prevalent during that era, as the Holley rooms reflect the Cos Cob Art Colony artists who were among the family’s tenants. “Festive arrangements of garlands and greenery, turn of the century holiday cards and gift wrapped parcels are placed
throughout the home, reflecting the Holley family’s warm hospitality,” she said.
The holiday decor of the Keeler Tavern’s 18th century rooms starts out simple with greenery and winter berries. The decorations start to get bigger in the 19th century dining room, featuring a decorated Christmas tree. Prescott said Christmas trees became popular in America after an engraving was published of Queen Victoria and her family decorating a tree.
“In the 20th century addition, the Gilbert Wing, we are able to ‘go all out’ and create a more historically accurate display with a large, heavily decorated tree and lots of toys,” Prescott said. She researched descriptions of area Christmas celebrations from the 1910s-1920s and examined photographs of Christmas celebrations of families whose social status was akin to the Gilberts to develop their holiday decorating scheme.
Most of these house museums have family items in their collections but also have bought items or received donations. “The decorations and Christmas traditions in the Holley-era portions of the Bush-Holley home come directly from period sources, including family photographs and letters preserved by members of the Holley and MacRae families,” Dimock said. A Christmas tree in the dining room with doll furniture underneath was inspired by a circa-1910 photograph of twin sisters Constant and Clarissa MacRae.
Holiday decorations at the Mark Twain House mostly come from the museum’s collections or are props like greenery. Among the most historically significant items on display are Harriet Beecher Stowe books given to Susy Clemens or a copy of “Myths of the Rhine” that was a gift for Mark Twain from his children. Assistant curator Mallory Howard said the tree decorations also show how they keep the holiday decor historically accurate: a mixture of handmade items like crocheted snowflakes, cranberry and popcorn garlands and paper snowflakes are mixed with store bought ornaments from that era.
While the pinecones on the tree and mantels are real in the Coley house, the tree, evergreen roping and berries are artificial. “I’m sure Cleora Coley is looking down at us and shaking her head in disgust,” Fargione said. “But for longevity and safety reasons we decided to go the artificial route.”