Colonial Sense: Society-Lifestyle: Signs of the Times: Christmas Decorating

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Christmas Decorating
Colonial Style

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Overview

Exterior

Interior

Every year all across the country one of the most enjoyable past times for millions of Americans is not just wrapping and giving gifts, but also decoration the interior and exterior of their homes. It truly helps stir the Christmas spirit within all of us. For Colonial homes, decorations were sparse compared to the lighting and and yard decorations of today. They used mainly greens like ivy and pine swags. The Christmas tree was a late comer to the homes of America.

In order to help you with this recession, we are bringing you some photos of decorations of area homes. You don't have to travel to Colonial Williamsburg to view the swags of evergreens and boxwoods on the colonial doorways and interiors. This is a pictorial guide on how you may use the same resources to decorate your homes. We encourage you to visit your local town or a village next to you and view how the they decorate the exterior of their homes. Take a camera, take exterior shots. Bring the photos back and catalogue them for next year. You might think there are no colonial homes in your town. Each town especially in the original thirteen colonies has a historical district with examples of Colonial, Federal, and Greek architecture. In Philadelphia, there is historical mansion upon mansion along Germantown Avenue. There are also historical mansions in Fairmount Park.

In the first section we will concentrate on exterior shots of our town we once visited on another Christmas house tour and featured in the town section of Colonial Sense, Marietta. The town is a mixture of Colonial, Federal, Italianete and Victorian mansions designed by lumber and iron barons. We visited the town for the 44th Annual Christmas House Tour on December 6 of this year. Marietta Restoration Associates gives prizes and award to the best decorations on the exterior of the homes as they did in Colonial Williamsburg in the 1930's. You might begin the same idea in your town next year.

In the second section we bring you interior homes of Marietta. This is one of the very few tours where the owners allow you to take interior shots. It is always best to ask first. So bring your swags of boxwood and evergreens, fruits and other decorations and come along for the ride. We can all save money together this year.

Source: Text & photos by Bryan Wright

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