Festive Decoration Evergreen Foliage

Posted by dodo

Long before the Christmas tree became an established symbol of yuletide, branches of evergreen foliage were used in festive decoration. In Roman times laurel and bay were cut to form Saturnalia wreaths which were brought the indoors for the celebration of the goddess Sternia. Because evergreens retained their leaves throughout the cold winter months, pagans held them as sacred symbols of good fortune, endowed with magical properties. Pagan associations with evergreen so shocked the Puritans that in 1647, officers were sent to a number of London churches, including Saint Margaret’s opposite the Houses of Parliament, to remove all traces of it from the ecclesiastical environs.

The jagged points of the green holly leaf and its bright red berries are traditionally thought to make it a potently male plant, with the power to ward off witches. Others of a more Christian frame of mind say the berries represent drops of Christ’s blood. The smooth leafed variegated holly and trailing ivy are associated with the female gender, but ivy is also linked with the wine- drinking god Bacchus and is said to protect against drunkenness.

Mistletoe was a plant worshipped by the pagans for its supposed powers of fertility, it was also used by Druids in their rituals. In many rural parts of England mistletoe is still not brought into the church, although in York Minster a bough is laid on the altar and left in place for the whole of the Christmas season. These days the most common custom still followed is the forfeit of a kiss by a girl or boy caught standing under an overhanging branch of mistletoe.

Wreaths were originally the centre-piece of festive decoration and came in a variety of shapes and forms. Kissing boughs created around hoops of wood or metal, shaped into a crown, were decorated with mistletoe and apples. Advent wreaths were made from branches of evergreen and adorned with four candles, one of which was lit on each Sunday in December leading up to Christmas Day when they were all lit together. Following a similar ritual, advent calendars or houses have a window opened each day during December to reveal a picture or sweet, although in Victorian times it would have been a moral motto or saying.

The introduction of the traditional Christmas tree is accredited to Queen Victoria’s husband Prince Albert, although some records suggest that Queen Charlotte, wife of George III, had a tree at Windsor in the eighteenth century. Prince Albert certainly popularized the tree-dressing custom of his native country, erecting his first Christmas tree at Windsor Castle in 1841. The origins of the Christmas tree are believed to lie in the Paradise tree or Tree of Life, represented in medieval Creation plays. A manuscript dated 1605 chronicles a tree ‘decorated with roses cut out of many coloured papers, apples, wafers, gold foil and sweets’. The use of candles and, latterly, electric lights is thought to portray the image of a starry and celestial heaven.

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