Christmas Traditions - by the Time Tunnellers

 In our final blog post before Christmas, the Time Tunnellers explore some favourite traditions.

Jeannie Waudby: My Christmas tradition is something we used to do as children. We always made our own decorations, usually from scrap paper or crepe paper bought from a fantastic tiny stationer’s. It was only big enough for a long counter behind which an old man perched on his stool with wonderful things around him: rolls of shiny paper, glitter, pots of paste…

A paper snowflake

We made window snowflakes by folding paper circles in half again and again and then snipping little triangles out. Once unfolded they formed a snowflake pattern.

The nice thing about this decoration is its use of low-key materials – paper and scissors. In a short time you can make enough snowflakes to cover a window. You can make them more dramatic by using silver paper or by varying the sizes, and you can experiment with different shapes.

Scissors and paper is all you need

We also made paper chains out of cut-up magazines and old wrapping paper and draped them across the doors and walls. These were also quite quick and easy to make. People would have made these throughout the last century and even the one before. Here are the Fossil sisters from Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfield with their paper chains, illustrated by Ruth Gervais.

 

Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfield, illustrated by Ruth Gervais

Susan Brownrigg:When I was little, my family received lots and lots of Christmas cards. I remember helping my mum drawing pin long pieces of red wool on the walls of the living room and hall and placing the open cards over them. Their would be cards from distant relatives, former work colleagues and loved ones who lived over seas. 

 

The first commercially produced Christmas card suggested by
Sir Henry Cole and drawn by John Calcott Horsley

The cards would often feature snowy scenes, golden bells, cute animals, Father Christmas and nativity scenes. They would look so cheery and festive as we counted down the days to Christmas.

A vintage Christmas card (Author's collection.)

Sadly, I don't have any of those cards anymore, but I do have a lovely small collection of cards from the 1930s which I use when visiting schools to talk about my new children's book, Gracie Fairshaw and the Trouble at the Tower, which is set at Christmas, 1935. 

The cards are much smaller than those my mum put up in the 1980s, but they feature many of the same scenes. 

1930s Christmas cards (Author's collection)

I love looking at the old verses and personal messages in side them, and they really give a sense of the times. 

A Victorian influenced Christmas card (Author's collection)

I especially like one design I own that features a very 1930s Fox Terrier on it!

 

1930s Fox Terrier Christmas card (Author's collection)

I wonder what future generations will make of card designs from the 2020s!

A 2021 Christmas card

 

Catherine Randall: The first sign that Christmas is coming in our house is when we get out our wooden nativity set, which doubles as an Advent calendar. I’ve shown this on the Time Tunnellers YouTube video. 

Wooden nativity set

Here I’d like to share with you two more unusual Christmas traditions. Like lots of Christmas traditions, they’re both associated with the Victorians.

The first one is a song. Every Boxing Day, my mum’s family would stand around the piano and sing a song called ‘Christmas Boxes’ from an old Victorian song book. 

 

Little Songs for Little Voices songbook

I think the tradition started when my granny was a child, over a hundred years ago, but it may be even older as the book is from the 1870s. 

 

Christmas Boxes

The tradition has passed down to me, my cousins and our families (though the quality of the piano-playing has declined somewhat!) I know Christmas is coming when I get out our Advent nativity scene, but I know it is really here when I hear the first few chords of ‘Christmas Boxes’.

 

Come Back, Lucy by Pamela Sykes

The other thing I do most Christmases is reread an old children’s book - Come Back, Lucy by Pamela Sykes. First published in 1973 and now sadly out of print, it is a wonderful Christmassy time-slip story about a lonely girl who moves into a Victorian house with a new family and is haunted by the girl who lived there in 1873, with dramatic results. It is one of the most imaginative, evocative books I have ever read. I only have to open it to get that lovely, enveloping Christmas feeling!

Ally Sherrick: Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without present-giving, no matter how big or small the gift. Of course, the Christian Nativity has a gift-giving scene at its heart – when the three wise kings travel from afar bearing gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh to give to the infant Jesus. But the tradition of present-giving in December began long before the emergence of Christianity.

Christmas present

For example, the Roman festival of Saturnalia, held to honour the god Saturn, and which took place in the dark days leading up to the winter solstice, was a time of great feasting and merry-making, and of gift-giving too.

But modern gift-givers beware! Extravagant presents were looked down on as not being in the spirit of the season. If you really wanted to show the recipient you cared, simple gifts were judged to be the best. Things like combs, toothpicks, moneyboxes and lamps. 

 A Roman lamp

And, usefully for budding authors, writing tablets! People also gave small wax and clay statues known as sigillaria and joke gifts too.  Meanwhile, if you fancied yourself a bit of a poet you might include a line of verse or two – much like we do in Christmas cards today.

Happy Saturnalia! And remember: the best things often come wrapped in small parcels ... 

Barbara Henderson: I love Christmas and the fact that there are so many different traditions, past and present. 

Last week, I took a train to Edinburgh to research my latest manuscript, a story set during the reign of Mary, Queen of Scots. 

Barbara in Edinburgh

I timed my visit so I could catch a talk about Christmas at the Court of the ill-fated Mary – these sorts of things add such wonderful colour to a historical novel.

Mary was certainly no party-pooper! She was used to lavish Christmas celebrations in Catholic France where she was brought up, but on her arrival, the Scottish protestants soon slammed on the brakes, forcing Mary to move some of her more extravagant celebrations to the 6^th of January instead. 

Her musicians were so intimidated by the protestant Lords that they refused to perform – the pressure was just too much. 

One thing we do know the Queen conducted is a celebration called ‘The Queen of the Bean’. A cake was baked for Christmas, and a bean was added to the dough. The Queen’s companions would each cut a slice of the cake, and whoever found the bean was allowed to be queen for the day. The Queen’s friend Mary Fleming won it one year, and was given a silver dress and a necklace of rubies belonging to the Queen to wear, while the famous monarch donned humble clothing instead. It echoes God making himself lowly in Jesus’ birth, but it also sounds great fun!

The Time Tunnellers would like to wish our readers a Happy Christmas, we will return in the new year.

A Victorian Christmas Tree

 

I’ll say this for Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha: He was an enthusiast. Steam Power, engineering, plumbing, Scotland, Christmas trees… Queen Victoria's husband could get excited about everything, and more.

Prince Albert

Wait, Christmas trees?

Yes – Christmas trees. Even if he wasn’t the first person in these isles to bring a fir tree inside and decorate it with lights, he most certainly popularised the tradition here – his homeland, Germany, had already embraced it.

Long before Christianity arrived on these shores, evergreen trees and plants were held sacred in winter. Some people developed beliefs that evergreen branches of fir, spruce or pine over their doors could keep away witches and ghosts, for example. Martin Luther, the German reformer, features in one particular legend – wandering through a snowy wood, he is said to have been struck by the beauty of the starlight twinkling through frosted evergreen branches of the fir trees. He decided to recreate the experience at home by bringing a tree inside and decorating it with candles.

Martin Luther

I have a particular affinity with fir trees, and I too am an enthusiast by nature, and hail from Germany. My parents owned a house atop a very steep slope. The grassy piece of land wasn’t much use for anything, but my ever-enterprising father took a trip to the local tree nursery and returned with 200 noble fir saplings, no bigger than a small pot plant each. Planting them all was back-breaking work. I was young – it is one of my earliest memories. I recall asking – when can we play hide-and-seek in these?’

Barbara (8) in the forest-heavy area of Germany where she grew up

‘Probably when you’re about fifteen,’ he answered, mopping sweat from his brow. I pouted. Being fifteen seemed an eternity away.

By the time the trees grew into hide and seek, I had grown out of it. Every winter, however, teenage me became more adept with a saw. Neighbours and friends came first – then the street and the next. One by one they chose their Christmas tree. I tied a label to it and, when the time came, dropped to my knees and worked my upper arms. I carried Christmas trees hither and thither and pocketed my modest share of the cash – it wasn’t the worst of seasonal jobs.

And every Christmas, my father, who had grown up surrounded by dense woodland on three sides, brought our own Christmas tree into the house – never earlier than Christmas Eve, NEVER. It was decorated with baubles, straw stars and lametta (sort of spaghetti made from foil, and a particular favourite of my dad’s) before fixing on the candles – yes, my father could never quite make friends with fairy lights.

My favourite moment of every year of my childhood was the moment when the little bell rang, inviting us children into the room. The first time we saw the Christmas tree, aglow with flickering candlelight, and presents in neat piles by each seat.

When I was researching my Victorian novel, Punch, I really wanted to capture some of the excitement of this new custom. My Highland-raised orphan Phineas has never seen a Christmas tree before – Christmas was not much celebrated so far north. Hogmanay, the Scottish New Year, was a much bigger occasion. My hero is travelling with Professor Merriweather Moffat’s Circus. Here is the moment he and his gruff fellow Highlander Mr Robertson are first confronted with a Christmas tree:

Punch, Barbara's Victorian adventure, features a Victorian Christmas

Through the windows, I spot flickering candles in fir trees, brought inside after the fashion of the late Prince Albert. It looks so very odd to me. I am doubly surprised when I open the door to a snow-clad Professor Moffat one night before Christmas and he has brought just such a tree. A real, green, living tree.

‘Phineas, would you be so kind as to fetch Mr Robertson, please? I would appreciate a helping hand.’

Even Mr Robertson groans and puffs, but the tree soon stands upright in the good front room, wedged into a bucket of wet sawdust and sand to keep it fresh.

‘What is it?’ Mr Robertson’s forehead is so furrowed, I can’t help laughing.

‘It’s a Christmas tree. Watch, gentlemen!’

‘Christmas tree,’ mutters Mr Robertson, shaking his head.

Merriweather Moffat reveals a small paper parcel and carefully unfolds it: inside is a strange collection of metal clips. ‘Like this!’ he announces as if he had invented the custom himself. ‘Clip it on, Phineas, so the round part faces upward.’

Ah, I see how it is meant to work. I fix my first clip on.

‘Very good – now, distribute them evenly, that’s right. Do you see, Mr Robertson? Alice, don’t you love it?’

Mrs Moffat stands in the corner of the room, clutching a pack of wax candles. ‘I do love it, dear. Who would not?’

‘Then place the candles in! No time like the present! Professor Moffat’s cheeks glow with excitement.

The street lamps outside are lit by the time we finish. Mr Moffat strikes a match and lights the first candle.

I am not sure what I expected. But maybe not the pleasant scent of a woodland, right in our home. The light of thirty candles, dancing and reflecting in the windowpane, casting ever-changing shadows against the wall, the furniture, and our faces, too.

‘Extinguish the candles now,’ Mr Moffat says suddenly, for all of us have sunk into an awed silence. ‘We must save on the wax. We will light it on Christmas Eve. They say the Queen knows how to make merry at Christmas, and after a year like ours, so shall we!’ He reaches into his coat and brandishes a book.

‘What’s that?’ Mr Robertson asks again. He is wary of books.

‘It’s a story. A ghost story called A Christmas Carol, by Mr Charles Dickens. And those of us who can read, shall read it to the others at night. And on Christmas, we will go to church, and we shall have a goose! Isn’t that right dear?’

I receive my first ever Christmas present. When my parents were alive, I might get a small present at Hogmanay, but never at Christmas. All these new ways. They are not the Highland ways.

But I find that I bear them very cheerfully.

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