Decorate your Christmas Tree in a truly traditional fashion with instructions from an authentic 19th C. magazine featuring a variety of holiday themes. For generations, Christmas has been the time to celebrate with friends and family, play in the snow with children, travel through winter wonderlands, relax around a fire, and prepare special meals with family and friends. For over a hundred years, this holiday involved extensive decorating inside and outside the home. Evergreens were strung over portieres, banisters, around fireplace mantels, and even along the borders of doors and windows.
Weeks before the Christmas holidays,
children made up little parties in search of moss,
ferns, gravel, and bright-hued stones to be used in making a Christmas Putz, a miniature landscape placed under an old-fashioned Christmas tree. For the children, the tree was the most prized possession of Christmas, holding all the presents underneath for them to joyfully open on Christmas day. In preparation before the tree arrived, the woman of the house was secretly gilding and silvering nuts and ornaments, making little balloons with fluted sides, and cutting fanciful shapes from colored papers to adorn old-fashioned Christmas trees. To increase the genuine fun for the fireside, the children were encouraged to manufacture as many of the trimmings as possible. Christmas trees were lit with burning wax candles attached to the tree. There were a variety of ways to decorate an old-fashioned Christmas tree, all can be easily duplicated today.
A red and white Christmas Tree may be made by tying all the packages in white tissue paper with red ribbon, or red tissue paper with white ribbon. Use white and red candles. Take single grains of popcorn, run a pin through and stick on the branches of the tree. Fill small white tarlatan stockings, buttonholed with red worsted, with popcorn. Decorate old-fashioned Christmas trees with red and white peppermint candy canes and red and white paper flowers, and drape the walls at the back of the tree with red cheesecloth.
Christmas Tree Full of Icicles
A Christmas tree full of icicles giving the effect of a thaw makes a glittering delight! This effect may be carried out by many short strings of glittering beads, gold, silver, opaque, and of popcorn draped. To have a silver-white Christmas tree, cover the branches of an eight-foot spruce tree with cotton batting, simulating drifts of snow. To the ends, and here and there on the branches, suspend glass icicles. Hang frosted silver balls upon the tree. When it is all finished scatter over it four papers of silver shower.
A Real Christmas Tree
For a real Christmas tree choose a symmetrical young tree in as sheltered a place as possible. If it is near shelving ledges of rock so that some rugs or blankets may be arranged for the guests to sit upon so much the better! Arrange to have your guests assemble immediately upon their arrival and see an old-fashioned Christmas tree under the wintry sky. The invitations might read "Wear warm wraps and come promptly." Candles may be hung thickly over the tree. Should there happen to be a light snowfall on Christmas Day the Christmas tree will be sufficiently beautiful to repay you for your desire to treat your guests to something entirely novel.
A Tree Good Enough to Eat
A Christmas tree good enough to eat may be made by trimming it with oranges, bananas, lemons, grapes, apples, raisens and nuts. Little figures made of raisins and prunes can be wired then also hung upon the branches. Do not hang any presents upon the Christmas tree, but fill a small tub with sawdust, and in it place the gifts wrapped in mystifying bundles securely tied. On Christmas morning give each member of the household a fishing-rod and let each one in turn take a chance at the bundles with it. The parcel hooked may be opened, unwrapped and given to the one whose name is inside.
Victorian Christmas Tree
Many of our modern-day Christmas customs have their roots in Victorian Christmas traditions. Prince Albert is to thank for making the decorated Christmas tree popular in Great Britain. In line with the custom in his homeland of Germany, Prince Albert had the first Christmas tree erected in Windsor Castle in 1841 and adorned with traditional German Christmas decorations. Also, it was in 1846 that two London bakers invented the ever-popular Christmas cracker and carol singers can also trace their origin back to the Victorian period. When it comes to decorating your holiday tree like a Victorian Christmas tree, explore our many authentic Victorian Christmas crafts, including a free ebook with patterns and instructions to create 19th century Christmas ornaments.
Artificial Christmas Trees
Many of us remember the white or silver fake Christmas trees of the 1960s with the rotating light wheel directing rainbow colors to reflect off of the tree. But did you know that a hundred years earlier, an artificial Christmas tree was introduced with all the bells and whistles of the "modern" age? Learn how to choose the best artifical Christmas tree. Next find out where to buy artificial Christmas trees. The good thing is that these types of trees are available at almost any store; you can even purchase Christmas trees online. If you don’t want to go through the process of shopping at a store to buy a tree, there are many online companies that specialize in Christmas trees and make purchasing an artificial tree quick and simple. However, online you do not get as good of a feel for what you are buying than if you went to a store and saw the tree in person. Thus, the best place to buy an artificial Christmas tree would be to go to a store and look at the selections yourself.
How to Decorate a White Christmas Tree
Now Christmas trees come in many different colors varying from green, silver, gold, red, pink, and even white artificial Christmas trees. Having a white Christmas tree adorn your home offers many new options for decoration than the traditional green tree. Depending on how you would like your tree, you can buy a pre lit white Christmas tree or an unlit one. You can purchase either type at stores or online. White artificial Christmas trees offer a neutral background for any color or theme. There are endless options for how to decorate a white Christmas tree. For a cooking or baking theme, ornaments can be found shaped liked cakes, pies, fruits, vegetables, and cooking utensils. For an animal lover, varieties of animal ornaments such as dogs, cats, birds, and zoo animals can stand out on a plain white Christmas tree.