The history of Christmas, when 'more mischief is committed than in all the year besides'

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Smaller homes in the Thirties led to the use of artificial Christmas trees Credit: Jane Lloyd

Some things, it seems, never change: the last-minute shopping, the early-morning cooking, the late-afternoon indigestion. But it hasn’t always been this way.

The Geffrye Museum’s annual Christmas Past show, exploring 400 years of seasonal traditions in English homes, opens on Tuesday. The museum has decorated 11 rooms in styles from the 1600s to the Nineties to show how Christmas, and the way we celebrate it, has evolved over the centuries.

In fact, the earliest room – 1630, a candlelit feast surrounded by wood-panelled walls – doesn’t show Christmas at all. “In the 17th century, it was New Year’s Day that was the high point of the festival season,” says Hannah Fleming, curator of the Geffrye Museum. “Christmas itself was associated with rowdy behaviour. It was seen as a church-endorsed licence to misbehave in a way you couldn’t get away with the rest of the year.”

Fleming quotes Philip Stubbes, a puritanical pamphleteer who wrote in The Anatomie of Abuses in 1583 that “more mischief is that time committed than in all the year besides”.

This was such a widely held view that, following the start of the Civil War, “Christmas was basically banned from 1644 to the restoration of the monarchy in 1660”, Fleming says. “People still celebrated it, but more quietly.”

The following rooms – 1695, a parlour arranged for a music recital, 1745, set for a rather sparse-looking tea, and 1790, a table laid smartly in white linen – don’t look particularly festive. The Christian traditions of dining, hospitality and giving alms persevere, Fleming says, but “Christmas dies away as a rowdy festival”.

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A Twelfth Night party from 1830 Credit: Christopher Ridley

Not for long, however. The carnival side of the festive period returns in the Regency room, which is ornately decorated with blue-lined wallpaper and gold-framed portraits, showing a Twelfth Night party from 1830.

At the centre of the table is the Twelfth Night cake, with white frosting and gilded trimming, which conceals a hidden bean. The person who finds the bean in their slice of cake, which “could even be the servant”, becomes the king of the night and gets to rule the household, Fleming explains.

It is not until the mid-19th century that Christmas as we would recognise it today starts to appear. Prince Albert is widely credited for bringing the tradition of decorating a Christmas tree to Britain from his native Germany.

Although Queen Charlotte, the German wife of King George III, is believed to have set up the first Christmas tree at Queen’s Lodge in Windsor in 1800, this spread mostly among the aristocracy in the early decades of the century. It was not until the mid-century, when The Illustrated London News published a drawing of the royal family gathered around a large, decorated tree, and newspapers started to report the monarchy’s tree in great detail, that the custom picked up among the wider public.

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The Christmas tree became commonplace in the mid-19th century Credit: Mandy Williams

The Geffrye’s room from 1870 shows a busy, festive scene centred on a green-draped table, on which stands a decorated Christmas tree. More greenery hangs from the chandelier in the middle of the room, sheet music rests against the piano and children’s toys are scattered on a table. “This is when Christmas starts to become a family holiday, with less of the adult themes,” Fleming says.

Trees and baubles are commonplace by 1910, but this Edwardian room – meant to be a new house in the suburbs – is the first to have stockings, which come from the Dutch tradition of putting out shoes on St Nicholas’ Day that entered Britain by way of America. There are also gifts under the tree and crackers on the table.

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The tradition of stockings was introduced in the Edwardian era

By the Thirties, fresh greenery makes way for artificial decorations. Colourful streamers line the ceiling, canapés and a cocktail trolley have pride of place in the centre of the room and a small, fake tree stands on the sideboard, beside the Christmas cards and record player.

“This was a new way of living, in smaller flats rather than houses, so artificial decorations were better for the space,” says Fleming. And it was between the wars, when “greenery was quite expensive”.

The focus on family returns by the Sixties, shown with an open-plan space in a town house. There is once again a large Christmas tree in the corner, circled with silver tinsel. A colourful paper chain with balloons at either end drapes the ceiling, and board games and other presents are scattered on the rug and sofas, surrounded by scraps of wrapping paper.

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The focus on family returns in the Sixties

The most recent room is set in a Shoreditch warehouse apartment in 1998. “Rather than the family set-up, we show friends who have come round for Christmas,” Fleming says. “In the exhibition we want to talk about contemporary fashions – so they’re cooking a Nigella turkey recipe.” The tree is real, she adds, with authentic decorations from the Nineties. “The baubles were from Heal’s.”

The museum collects donations of decorations, old diaries and photographs for its archive and to help frame future exhibitions.

It’s not just about the comings and going of Christmas customs – a tree here, a bauble there. The show allows us to see people’s lives and to consider what doesn’t really change at all.

Christmas Past is on display at the Geffrye Museum in east London from November 22 to January 8. Visit geffrye-museum.org.uk

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