Sunday, December 21, 2008

Christmas is Over…



At least at Patterson House… the last tour is winding its way through as I write this… Of course the rest of the world thinks there are a few more days to go…
Here at Patterson House we will start to take it all down, every ornament, every bit of garland, all the wreaths, and bows, and try once again to stuff it in the attic…
I encountered this quote…

“Christmas is the Disneyfication of Christianity” - Don Cupitt.

Having just celebrated our Victorian Christmas it makes way too much sense… In 1857 when our house was built Santa Claus didn’t exist… they had Father Christmas, dressed in buckskins… The celebration would have looked a lot like our Thanksgiving dinner…

Artist Thomas Nast drew a series of pictures for Harper’s Magazine, creating the Santa (including a civil war era Santa in red white and blue…) we know and love… Coca Cola took those images and used them to market their products… The Christmas tree was unknown outside of Germany…

Queen Victoria brought a Christmas tree to Buckingham Palace, it was covered in Godey’s Ladies Book (a magazine) and everyone needed one from then on…

Today its an ongoing debate about how much Christmas we need at our historic house... Too much wins hands down... Thanks to Coke, Halmark, Macy’s and Gimballs, today Christmas is something else…

Its starting to rain… Its cold… I think I will put another log on the fire…

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