Deck the Halls with Boughs of ... Oranges?

Exploring Christmas Decorating Traditions at The Brown Homestead

Are you looking for a fun family activity this holiday season? Something artsy with a vintage flair? Well look no further! This instructional “how-to” article will explain how to make your own traditional Christmas decorations - like we did in the historical context of The Brown Homestead in the 19th and early 20th centuries. You and the kiddos can learn about this piece of our Canadian heritage while you craft, and seriously... what's more fun than that?

Introduction

If you have ever worked retail in December, then you are intimately familiar with common Christmas carols, including the ever popular “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas” from 1951. But what does Christmas even look like? Through the lyrics, songwriter Meredith Willson refers to common Christmas decorations, including “the prettiest sight to see, [which] is the holly that will be on your own front door.” However, despite our instant connection to this popular motif, English holly would not have initially decorated The Brown Homestead. In fact, The Brown Homestead actually predates most of our major modern Canadian Christmas traditions. It is very likely that the John Brown House saw the evolution of these decorations changing its interior stylings every December.

In recognition of this long relationship between the John Brown House and the holiday season, we thought we might try our hand at decorating the dining room through creating five different period accurate decorations, with the amazing assistance of a few of our helper elves! Along with sharing the fun we had, we have also included instructions for creating these pieces of heritage to decorate your own home.

Please remember to share your creations with us by tagging our social media!

The Brown Family - Georgian Era (1796-1857)

Christmas in the Georgian Era was markedly different from what we would later see in the Victorian Era. An important consideration when examining the Georgian Era, was the relationship between Upper Canada and Britain. As a British colony, Upper Canada was striving to create traditions that were uniquely Canadian, while also feeling a deep nostalgia for the English Christmas traditions settlers were familiar with. Embracing the snowy Canadian frontier, sleighing and ice skating became popular winter pastimes in North America, with “sleigh bells jingling” eventually being recognized as a key component of Christmas cheer in the later Victorian era.(1)

Despite these emerging traditions, Christmas was not celebrated as the joyous holiday we would now recognize. Rather, mentions of Christmas would not enter Upper Canadian newspapers until the late 1820s, and would be somewhat dismal. In 1828, a canal worker wrote of Christmas that: “In Dow’s great swamp, one of the most dismal places in the wilderness, did five Irishmen, two Englishmen, and one Scotchman hold their merry Christmas - or rather, forget to hold it at all.”(2)

However, this is not to say that Christmas was never observed or celebrated in Upper Canada. In fact, to bring the traditions of Christmas that settlers were familiar with to the chilly winters of Upper Canada, decorations were often relied upon to create a festive atmosphere so that, in the words of Catherine Parr Traill in 1838, “it might look more like an English Christmas day.”(3) One of the primary issues with wanting to emulate an English Christmas in Niagara, was the difference in native plant life. For instance, traditional Christmas holly is not native to Upper Canada, and many English settlers began using cranberries and spruce boughs to create a similar appearance indoors. Ever popular in Georgian decorations was the use of citrus and fruit to create pops of colours and provide a fresh scent through the holiday season.

By the 1790s, fruit juice concentrate was widely available in Niagara for cooking, however fresh citrus remained a luxury, leading to its popularity during the holidays.(4) Along with evergreen and cranberries, oranges became the most popular Christmas decoration in the Georgian era.

Decorating Instructions

For our decorations here at The Brown Homestead, we elected to create two popular orange decorations from the period. The first decoration is dried, dehydrated, or glass orange ornaments. These dried oranges can be used to create tree ornaments or garlands, and look gorgeous in windows as sunlight will shine through their centres, creating an appearance similar to stained glass (hence the name glass oranges!). To dry out oranges, simply place thinly sliced oranges on a parchment paper lined baking sheet, and dry them in your oven at 200°F for four hours, making sure to flip the oranges every 30 minutes. Leave the oranges out on your baking sheet to dry overnight, and you will have dried oranges to add a little Georgian flair to your tree, windows, or wherever else you’d like them to be!

The second Georgian Era decoration we tried out were orange pomanders. This simple decoration only requires two key ingredients: oranges and dried whole cloves. All that is required is to push the stems of the cloves into the peel of the orange. You can get very creative and make as many designs as you’d like! This craft is also perfect for children, who enjoy getting imaginative with the placement of the cloves, and find it accessible for little hands. Children may need just a little bit of adult assistance to push the cloves fully through the orange peel, but overall, this is an approachable and fun craft!

A huge bonus to these orange-y decorations (besides just being fun to make) is that they smell delicious and will brighten up your home just in time for the holidays! Plus you’ll be able to capture those Jane Austen vibes and annoy your loved ones by asking “orange you glad we did this?” Truly, a positive experience all around.

The Chellew Family - Victorian Era (1857-1902)

The Christmas tree, an icon of the holiday season, appeared in Germany around the 16th century, but was largely unknown in the British Empire until the Royal family popularized it in the early Victorian era. In 1848, after the Illustrated London News published the engraving titled “The Royal Christmas Tree,” which depicted Queen Victoria and Prince Albert’s young family enjoying the presence of a Christmas tree, the tradition reached spread across England.(5)

It is possible that the Browns, being of German descent, had a Christmas tree in their home before the Victorian era (1837-1901), but we have no way to know for sure, so it may be that the first Christmas tree was decorated in the John Brown House by the Chellew family. A total of eleven Chellew children of disparate ages lived in the John Brown House in 1858 when Joseph Chellew Sr. purchased the property from Jacob Brown, so we imagine there were lots of little volunteers to help decorate!

To reflect the new-found popularity of the Christmas tree, we tried our hands at making tree ornaments. In Upper Canada, ornaments were typically handmade from paper, cookies, or fruits. Glass baubles were available in the nineteenth century, but as they were not mass produced until the 1890s in North America, they remained restricted to the wealthy upper classes.(6) While it is possible the Chellews owned glass or metal ornaments, it is likely that they also decorated their tree with homemade decorations, which is what we have chosen to emulate at The Brown Homestead in 2021.

Decorating Instructions

The first Victorian decoration we created was the ever-popular paper snowflakes. Though paper snowflakes as a craft can be dated back to the Japanese practice of kirigami, which is a variation of origami that involves cutting the paper, paper snowflakes were a popular craft for Victorian children, particularly as the cost of making these decorations was low. This would have been an accessible craft for lower income families throughout Niagara, who often decorated their homes and trees with paper. However, the cost-effectiveness does not make these snowflakes any less beautiful, and they are a perfect craft for a chilly, snowy day.

To create paper snowflakes, simply fold a piece of standard printer size paper in half twice, before folding that square diagonally from the centre point. This should create a triangle out of your folded paper and will give you six-points, which is accurate for a snowflake. However, you can fold the paper from the centre point one more time to create an eight-point snowflake, if you’d like a more intricate design. Create cutouts from the folded edges of the triangle, and cut off the point and top of the triangle in a fun pattern as well. Once you are happy with your cutouts, simply unfold the triangle to unveil your unique snowflake! Just like real snowflakes, no two paper snowflakes will be the same, which is perhaps the most exciting part of making this simple craft. These snowflakes can be displayed in windows, strung from the ceiling, or hung on your tree to bring a little bit of winter inside, luckily without the cold!

The second decoration that we made to reflect the Victorian era was perhaps the most popular with our helper elves. To replicate the common practice of decorating trees with cookies, but without having to worry about food spoiling, we made a salt dough to create fun shapes.

To make a salt dough, combine 4 cups of flour with 1 cup table salt. Stream in 1½ cups of water, and stir until combined. Knead dough until soft, about five minutes. You can add food colouring at this point if you would like. Roll the dough to about ⅛ of an inch thick, and use cookie cutters to create fun and festive shapes. This dough holds its shape without spreading, so feel free to carve designs into them before baking.

This is also a fun project for creating a keepsake of children’s handprints or pets’ pawprints. Be sure to add a hole at the top of the ornament for a hook or ribbon before baking them. Lay the ornaments on a parchment paper lined baking sheet, and bake in the oven at 300°F for one hour, or until dry. Once the ornaments are cooled, you can paint them and seal them with mod podge or polyurethane spray to preserve them. If cared for properly, these ornaments will last a lifetime!

This craft was a big hit amongst our elves, who probably had more fun playing with the dough than actually creating ornaments! Though it is all natural, and completely safe to eat, one of our elves quickly discovered it is not very tasty and would not recommend eating the dough. He’s going to just stick with Timbits from now on.

The Powers Family - The Roaring ‘20’s (1902-1979)

By the early twentieth century, Canadian Christmas decorating traditions had been well established, and changed mostly in superficial ways to compliment interior design trends (for example, futuristic silver trees were all the rage in the late 1950s and early 1960s).

With increased mass production in North America, metal and glass ornaments were more affordable for the middle and lower classes. Tinsel wire in particular rose to popularity in the early twentieth-century, which could be draped over the branches of a tree or shaped into various ornaments.

To keep our crafts fun and easy, we chose to recreate tinsel wire ornaments using metallic pipe cleaners to emulate the same look as tinsel wire without the sharp edges tinsel can sometimes have. We were able to mold our pipe cleaners into plenty of period appropriate shapes that added a beautiful shine and colour to our christmas tree. This craft was easy for kids, and really let them get creative with mixing shapes and colours, which was a ton of fun and really brought the spirit of both Christmas and the Roaring ‘20s to the Brown Homestead!

Conclusion

Mixing all these decorations together, we ended up with a beautiful Christmas tree that reflects the extensive history of The Brown Homestead and its evolving Christmas traditions. Most importantly, however, this tree represents community. We were able to come together and share in the fun of recognizing our local heritage and the ways it continues to shape our modern world. We encourage you to also experience this simple joy of kinship while creating some holiday cheer.

The holidays are a time for reflecting on the positive relationships we have formed throughout the year. From friends and family, to coworkers and volunteers, we are grateful for every person who has made The Brown Homestead a wonderful environment to work and grow in. Here’s to everything that is still to come!

We wish you a joyous holiday season, and a prosperous and healthy New Year. Merry Christmas from all of us at The Brown Homestead


(1) “Jingle Bells” was written by American composer James Lord Pierpont in 1857 based on his experience living in New England and in weather comparable to Upper Canada.

(2) Colin K. Duquemin, Christmas in Upper Canada & Canada West: Customs and Practices (Niagara South Board of Education, 1991), 1.

(3) Ibid., 48.

(4) Gareth Newfield, Culinary History of Early Niagara (Cornwall, ON: Parks Canada, 2010), 54.

(5) Tara Moore, Victorian Christmas in Print (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 1.

(6) Ace Collins, Stories Behind the Great Traditions of Christmas (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2003), 74-75.

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