CHRISTMAS

“Christmas is not an eternal event at all,
but a piece of one’s home that one
carries in one’s heart”

With summer melding into fall, the sudden appearance of Christmas decorations in the stores is usually the first reminder for most of us, of the Festive Season’s imminent arrival.

With today’s pervasive and commercial presence, I was led to wonder about the original reasons for this intense annual
preparation, and it seems that like many early ideas, they were borne out of superstition and the desire to perpetuate a long and healthy life.

The earliest traditions began, not with the Christian message, but in premedieval times, with the need to encourage the good spirits of nature into the warmth and shelter of home during the winter months. Well-wishers brought evergreen branches into their houses, suspending them just inside the entrance, and lay boughs outside to ensure that no good spirit could leave.

This tradition coincided in Britain during the sixth century with the first celebrations of the birth of Christ, and expansion of the original idea began to evolve. The evergreen boughs were mixed with holly and mistletoe, and willow branches were plied into double hoops, twined with bay and rosemary.

Eventually, the hanging of boughs, shifted significance from the beckoning of spirits to the Christian message of forgiveness, and an embrace beneath them demonstrated the desire to forget the
enmity of friends and neighbors. Gradually, any religious intent was
replaced by the desire to simply kiss! Queen Victoria........ disapproved some of the vulgar customs associated with Christmas, so there began a new custom, each time a kiss was stolen under the
mistletoe, a berry was plucked off, and when there were no more berries, there were to be no more kisses.....”

The presence of the Christmas tree inside the home is no less early, and with it, the emergence of decorative ornaments. These were created throughout Christian Europe, with each country making use of their own readily available materials. The Scandinavians carved and painted wooden figures, and wove garlands and animals from grain. The Italians decorated with fruits, and the Polish cut intricate
patterns and decorations from paper. In Germany candles were prolific, as well as painted, guilded figures of toys, angels, cherubs, stars or musical instruments, made either from tin or wood. Even cotton
batting was used to embellish a bough or branch, while the more affluent purchased fine strings of chandelier beads and colored
balls from Bohemia, where there was a long history of producing beautiful glass. These balls were sometimes silvered on the inside, and began to appear in a wide variety of shapes and colors. It was in the early 20th Century that, with the advent of electricity, Christmas lights offered a more lasting and safer alternative to candles, and with increased manufacturing, America became the home of
the mass production of Christmas ornaments.

Today the abundance of choice from around the world knows no bounds, and with limitless shapes, colors and themes available to us, we have the opportunity to dress up our homes in a traditional way, or to draw from the decorative themes and colors that we have already established.

Madeleine Adams
Millington-Adams Interiors
Tel: 905-951-3582 www.millington-adams.ca