Unwrapping the Glitz of Christmas
Christmas is often a profoundly emotional and sentimental time for families and friends to celebrate with each other, and with gifts, food, and special decorations for their homes and offices. Many families even have strong and beloved memories of their Christmas trees, the traditions around choosing the fresh tree, untangling strings of lights, unwrapping the delicate glass ornaments, garland, and tinsel, and even taking everything down after the holidays. The artifacts of Christmas celebrations give us hints about our family members and the people they were, the lives they led, and even their social statuses. Many of us have in our own collections heirloom ornaments, figures, trees, keepsakes, even lights or candles that have been handed down from our parents and grandparents. Naturally these decorations and traditions have strong emotional ties.Unfortunately for many of us, determining the origin of a single ornament, or even which ancestor originally owned that ornament, can sometimes pose a challenge. But by learning more about dating and placing our heritage ornaments, we can attempt to work backwards and maybe even figure out exactly who held the ornament before us.
What You Can Tell about Ornaments
Sometime early in the sixteenth century, the first Christmas tree was decorated, and the fashion quickly took hold. By the middle of the same century, towns in Germany began holding Christmas street fairs and markets where wax trinkets and other tree adornments were sold.
In America, Christmas customs varied substantially at the time, and they were usually dep endent upon the dominant ethnic group in an area. Community trees, for example, were visible in Pennsylvanian German settlements by the mid-1700s, although decorated trees elsewhere in America were rare prior to the mid-1800s. Also, areas with German-Catholic settlers used wreaths and candle decorations, while settlers in areas with strong British/Anglican-church influences may have only placed holly in their windows to celebrate the holiday.
Early tree decorations were often edible—fruit and nuts—or homemade. But by the 1850s, German manufacturers began producing glass bead garlands and golden-haired angels for trees. At about the same time, English trees began to blossom with decorations including small toys and, later, with patriotic-themed decor.
Some of the glass ornaments you might find in a family’s collection could date back to the 1870s, when the first glass ornaments, similar to the ones we know today, were imported into Britain from Lauscha, Germany. Silver glass orbs called kugels were manufactured there as well. Because of the cost of these exotic glass ornaments, owning them was often considered a symbol of status. How-ever, by the 1880s, kugels were being imported en masse; in the United States, they were even sold through five-and-dime stores.
If your ancestors were early settlers of the American West, they would have relied on their own creativity, piercing tin cups and boxes to hold candles. You might find lanterns that were used to hold candles on trees, and photographs and colored ribbons that were fashioned into handmade decorations.
In the 1920s, Czech-made ornaments first arrived in America, reducing the cost of the traditional German designs and making ornaments more accessible to the masses. Domestic-produced ornaments ap-peared in the United States in the mid-1930s when Shiny Brite, a company founded by a German immigrant, began production of ornaments in the United State s and sold them directly to Woolworth’s.
By the 1930s, glass ornaments, tinsel, and the classic golden-haired angel were the trend in the United States. The onset of World War II, however, resulted in a scarcity of materials—often heirloom ornaments were stored for safe keeping. That same scarcity drove American manufacturers to drop silvering techniques. Identifying heirloom war-time ornaments can mean looking for translucent ornaments or ones with simple stripes painted on them. Standard colors of the period were red, blue, and aqua with narrow bands of yellow or white. Sometimes paper caps were used instead of metal.
If your family’s ornament collection is newer, you’ll find post-war deco-rations notable for their modern influences: artificial and metallic trees and hand-painted, inexpensive Japanese ornaments. Post–World War II ornaments, like the ones many of us remember as those of our childhood, also in–clude the solid-co-lor-ed silvered ornaments sold by the dozen in cardboard-boxed sets.
In the early 1950s, Italian ornaments were first imported into the United States. You can recognize them because of their classical fairy tale themes. Italian ornaments will have beautiful high-quality glass and artistic, free-blown, hand painted forms.
What Ornaments Can Tell You
As tends to be the case with any exploration of things we find in the attic, some ornaments may illustrate or give a hint about an ethnic connection in our families. For example, in Russia, after the Bolshevik Revolution when religious celebration was banned, Christmas trees morphed into New Year’s trees. As a result, clocks became a favorite ornament, with hands set to reflect the new year&r squo;s arrival.Other ethnic groups also have preferences for specific types of ornaments. For example, Latin American families would often display ornaments that represent death. Scandinavian lifestyles and traditions resulted in ornaments that include grain garlands, straw goats, and little wooden gnomes. What Your Ornaments Will Say to Future Generations
For the next generation, our traditions are still changing to reflect what we are experiencing. Many of the families I know have started their own Christmas tree traditions. Commercial ornaments with dates commemorating an important event, such as a birth or a marriage, are popular.Many families today note that as their children grow, ornaments that reflect each child’s interests are also added to the tree. It may be a good idea to remember those moments with annual pictures showing how the trees in our own families change over time.One final thought on the preservation of our heirloom holiday decorations: given the fragile nature of some of the older ornaments we may have, perhaps it is time to think about shifting from the old cardboard box that stores the ornaments in the attic to acid free archival boxes in heat-controlled environments so we can preserve these treasures for future generations.
Roseann Reinemuth Hogan, Ph.D., has been researching her family history since 1978. Her special interests include oral history and social history.
How the Tree Got Its Lights
Legend says that Martin Luther may have placed the first candle on a fir tree. But it wasn’t until the late 1880s, when Edison experimented with small bulbs on a tree, that electric lights were finally used.According to George Nelson’s web-site, The Antique Christmas Lights Museum, prior to 1900, lights on American Christ-mas trees were rare. Most families in America did not light their trees, or they did so only for limited amounts of times with candles or glass candle cups called fairy lights.Around the turn of the century, prior to the adoption of electric lights, gas lights and lights that used cooking oil became popular tree adornment. Americans didn’t finally adopt electric lights on Christmas trees until after World War II.
However, the first use of electric bulbs on a Christmas tree was well documented. In 1882, Edward Johnson, an associate of Thomas Edison, became the first person to use electric lights on a Christmas tree. The following account of Johnson’s tree is credited to William Croffut, a reporter with the Detroit Post and Tribune:
“Last evening I walked over beyond Fifth Avenue and called at the residence of Edward H. Johnson, vice-president of Edison’s electric company. There, at the rear of the beautiful parlors, was a large Christmas tree presenting a most picturesque and uncanny aspect. It was brilliantly lighted with many colored globes about as large as an English walnut and was turning some six times a minute on a little pine box. There were eighty lights in all encased in these dainty glass e ggs, and about equally divided between white, red, and blue. As the tree turned, the colors alternated, all the lamps going out and being relit at every revolution. The result was a continuous twinkling of dancing colors, red, white, blue, white, red, blue—all evening.”
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