A Virtual Christmas Tour of The Museum of the Home (FKA The Geffrye Museum) 2022)

Hi, I'm Jessica the Museum Guide, and today I'm here at Hackney's Museum of the Home to walk through Christmas Through the Ages, different rooms decorated in period Christmas and Hanukkah decorations from 1630 all the way through to 1992. As we walk throughout the Museum of the Home, we're going to visit 10 different rooms, each decorated with period decorations, and I'm going to tell you about some of the strange and wonderful Christmas and holiday traditions, their origins and their histories. But first, let me tell you just a little bit about the Museum's history. The Museum of the Home was formerly known as the Jeffery Museum. That's what it was called when I worked here doing children's programming about a decade ago. The building is a former Aldous house built in 1714, essentially the precursor to socialized housing. Wealthy individuals and the church funded residences where people, often the elderly or occasionally young mothers, could live for free. This building dates back to an endowment left by the estate of Robert Jeffery, a businessman and one-time Lord Mayor of London. Jeffery, who was born in 1613, was an altruistic man to some. He earned a lot of his fortune via the slave trade, and so while his estate offered charitable housing to the widows of ironmongers, he also profited on the pain and torture of enslaved people. That's just one of the reasons why the Museum changed its name to the Museum of the Home, which is far more accurate anyway. Today, many almshouses across the country are posh flats, but this block of almshouses was converted into a museum back in 1914, when it was dedicated purely to furniture and woodwork. See, Shoreditch and Hoxton were historically known for the furniture trade, and so this was a natural topic for the Museum. However, by the 1930s, the Museum shifted its focus to the history of domestic life, and pivoted towards a younger audience, offering a lot of educational programs for kids, which they still do. After a five-year renovation, the Museum reopened last year with an all-new Christmas display, and I'm really excited to walk through it today with you. We're entering into our first room, from the late Tudor and Stuart period. This one's roughly 1630. Christmas was usually celebrated for the 12 days after Christmas Day at this time. You can see the pine boughs that were used to decorate this room, as well as the yule log crackling away in the fireplace. During the 12 days of Christmas, people would play games of skittles or cards, eating delicious feasts every night of the best food that they could afford, including this boar's head, which I'll talk about more in a moment. Let's talk a little bit about the pine boughs, which had been collected and hung in the winter in England for thousands of years. We have evidence of this from the times of the earliest settlements, far earlier than any Christian worship in the country. Evergreens were prized for their ability to stay fresh and green throughout the cold winter season, symbolizing rebirth and everlasting life. Of course, that meaning translates very easily into the Christian context. Holly, mistletoe, and ivy can all produce fruit even in the coldest parts of winter, giving them further symbolism of abundance for a new year ahead. Here is the fire log, a tradition brought to England from Scandinavia, where the Norse celebration of Yule marked the annual solstice when the days would begin to get longer again. A log, decorated with ribbons and evergreen boughs, would be lit with a stump of last year's log, the Yule brand. Ideally, it should burn for the entire 12 days, and if it went out, that was a symbol of bad fortune. Travelling bands of actors called mummers would travel from door to door enacting mummers plays. While this tradition is now rather uncommon in the UK, you can still see a mummers parade every New Year's Day in Philadelphia. Though banned in the 1860s after the murder of a local man by masked mummering men, mummering in Newfoundland and Labrador experienced a big resurgence in the 1980s. Now, there is an annual mummers festival in St. John's around Christmas time. In this room here, gifts were typically exchanged on New Year's Day rather than Christmas, and that didn't change until the middle of the 19th century, which we'll see later on. It was very common for peasants to give their landlords a gift of the best produce, like a plump capon, a castrated male cock, fattened for eating, or baskets of apples and eggs. These gifts weren't exactly mandatory, but they weren't not mandatory, if you know what I mean. With the wealth and decadence of this room, we are clearly in the landlord's home, so we should be receiving our decadent gifts soon. The head of the household would enter a room like this with the pièce de résistance of the feast, a boar's head on a platter, or even a cockenthrice, this nightmare, which is the hind of a chicken stitched to a pig's head, and yes, people did actually eat this. In poorer households, it would be a piece of brawn, a boiled down piece of lesser cut, later to refer exclusively to a pig's brain terrine. The first turkeys do arrive to the UK in the 1530s, but they do not become popular at Christmas until the late 1600s, and they don't become the roast of choice until the 19th century, when so many other modern Christmas traditions take hold. However, in this room, the crowning glory of the suites would be a march pane, a highly decorated disc of marzipan, decorated with other brightly coloured sweets. People would also make little gag sweets, like bacon and eggs made from marzipan, accompanied by jellies, tarts, fruit pies, and biscuits, all in elaborate stands. It was a very idealised and classic Christmas. Now here is the home of a Puritan in 1683, so we won't see much of the festive revelry we've just witnessed in the last room. It's hard to wrap our heads around the fact that Christmas was actually banned by Act of Parliament during the long Parliament of the Interregnum, from 1647 to 1660, during the English Civil Wars and the rule of Oliver Cromwell. It was called the Ordinance for the Abolishing of Festivals. For those who don't know, we beheaded our king, Charles I, in 1649, and Oliver Cromwell, a staunch Puritan, was named Lord Protector of the Realm. The 11 years that he ruled are called the Interregnum, and then Charles II returned from exile and restored the English monarchy and made England fun again. But back to Cromwell's time, his rule followed a century of turbulence between Catholics and Protestants, and banning Christmas was an extreme way to take a stand against the perceived idolatry and decadence of the Catholics. Puritans like Cromwell believed that we shouldn't revel in the flesh, and they disagreed with the feasting, gifts, gambling, and drunkenness of the Christmas season. Instead, we should all be focused on piety and prayer. Not very much fun at all. Even 60 years before the Civil Wars, Philip Stubbs, who is described as a Puritan pamphleteer, what a wonderful word, was railing against Christmas. He wrote, more mischief in that time is committed than in all the year besides. What masking and mumming, whereby robbery, whoredom, murder, and whatnot is committed? What dicing and carting, what eating and drinking, what banqueting and feasting is then used, more than in all the year besides, to the great dishonor of God and impoverishing of the realm? Geez, Philip, don't promise me a good time. Puritans like these guys pointed to the fact that there is no scriptural basis for a December birth of Christ, nor is there any call to celebrate the birth of Christ with a festival. They believed, in criticism we still hear today, that Christmas was little more than a pragmatic festival designed to incorporate earlier Norse and pagan rituals as a way of sweetening the deal for early Christian converts to Christianity. Some say that Cromwell even banned mince pies and other Christmas foods, but that is a myth, mostly. The only Christmas day on which eating mince pies was explicitly illegal was 1644, as 25th December that year fell on a legally mandated day of fasting. That said, though mince pies were never technically banned, they were strongly disproved of and seen as a symbol of the immoral excesses of Christmas and the festive season in general. During the ban on Christmas, people did rebel and fight back, and there were small uprisings across the country. While markets were instructed to remain open during the 12 days of Christmas, people did still gather to drink, play cards and feast, and some churches held special services. Here we can see a 1653 pamphlet championing the vindication of Christmas. After the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, some people returned to their Christmas celebrations with fervor, but others, like this household, chose to keep it a somber and understated affair. Now this family in this room has just come back from a frost fair on the Thames. These fairs were held on the thick frozen ice between the early 17th and 19th century, at a time known as the Little Ice Age. Even during this cold period, the fairs were rare, happening only every few decades. This family has just attended the frost fair of 1683. While they were there, they may have seen a full ox being roasted over a spit on the ice, horse and coach racing, puppet plays, ice skating, football, nine-pin bowling and sledding. Here we can see that the father had a souvenir card printed on the Thames. The printer Kroome sold souvenir cards printed with the customer's name, the date and the fact that the card was printed on the Thames. Even Charles II bought this novelty. Now we're entering into the third room and we're leaving behind the Christian celebration of Just two years ago, the Museum of the Home put out a call for Sephardic Jewish life in London for this exhibit, and they received feedback and objects from London's large community. London is home to the world's 21st largest Jewish population, yet the museum's assistant curator, Louis Plattman, says I found Jewish history of the period underrepresented generally in British history books. That's why he supervised the creation of this 1745 Jewish drawing room, set up for a Hanukkah celebration. Although Mr. Plattman is himself Ashkenazi, this room focuses on an earlier Sephardi population that began to emigrate to London in the 17th and 18th centuries, moving between London and Amsterdam, a city that was often more tolerant of the Jews who arrived from Spain. Not too far away from the Museum of the Home, we can find the oldest synagogue in the UK, Bevis Marks, and they worked with Mr. Plattman on this display. While they may not yet have an authentic 18th century candle menorah, they do have a 1734 prayer book written in Judeo-Spanish and containing special prayers for Hanukkah. They also have this Hanukkah oil lamp. Let's just talk a little bit more about the history of Judaism in the UK. The first Jews to settle in Britain originally came from Normandy by invitation of William the Conqueror in the 1060s, who offered them his royal protection. While they were forbidden to own land or bear arms, they could lend money for interest, which Christians could not do. They founded credit services, offering credit when there were no such thing as banks, at least not as we know them. They paid heavy, heavy taxes and increasingly faced anti-Semitism. Edward I confiscated their property and expelled them in 1290, and they would remain banned for more than 300 years. However, in the late 1500s, England began to welcome Muranos, Jews from Spain and Portugal who converted to Christianity and adopted Spanish or Portuguese names after persecution by the Inquisition. While they attended Catholic mass at the Portuguese embassy, they practiced the Jewish religion in secret. When Oliver Cromwell came to power, he wanted to change things up. Cromwell believed in biblical interpretations that stated that the second coming could only occur when the Jews have been scattered to the four corners of the world. Puritans like Cromwell saw the Jewish freedom of religion in Amsterdam as a favorable sign and invited Jews to live and trade in England. London merchants resented this competition, and so Cromwell put together a panel of experts to discuss, and he lost. The readmission of the Jews was dismissed, for now. However, after a war between England and Spain, all property of Spanish citizens in England was confiscated. One Murano, Antonio Robles, successfully argued that his Spanish citizenship had only been adopted under duress, and that he was actually Jewish. He won, and a By the 19th century, Queen Victoria allowed asylum to hundreds of thousands of Ashkenazi Jews, fleeing pogroms in Tsarist Poland and Russia, and London's Ashkenazi Jewish population soon outnumbered its Sephardic one. Here you can see that the family is enjoying some fried food, which is traditionally eaten during Hanukkah celebrations, to represent the fact that a very small amount of oil miraculously burned for eight days, instead of just one day that was predicted during the secondary dedication of the temple in the second century. Did you know that fish and chips were actually originally sold as fish fried in the Jewish style? It's true, the very first fish and chip shop in the country was opened by a Russian Jewish immigrant called Joseph Malin, in London's East End. I plan to make a video soon about the history of London's Jewish East End, along with a trip to the Jewish Museum, so let me know in the comments below if you'd be interested in watching. Now let's move on to this Georgian Christmas display, which shows us Boxing Day. Now for my American viewers, Boxing Day is not a day of bare-knuckle fighting, even when you're sick of your family. It's the day after Christmas, when we box everything back up and eat leftovers, and spend even more time with our family, for better or for worse. There isn't a lot of decoration in this room at first glance, but there are a few things to notice. By the 18th century, people were much more restrained in how they celebrated Christmas. When we analyze diaries, there aren't many mentions of the festivities, and in fact we often find business letters written on this day, so at least some people were at work. That said, most people do seem to have gone to a special Christmas sermon. For the upper and middle classes, it was all about elegant entertaining, with just a few pops of festive flair, like this greenery dotted throughout the room, usually laurels, rosemary, and pine. Special porridges containing dried fruits, wine, and spices were consumed, along with pies, and people did wish each other a happy Christmas throughout the season. People did play some pretty strange games, such as bullet pudding. A pile of flour was arranged into a cone, and then a bullet was placed on top. Players had to kind of slice away bits of the flour pudding, without allowing the bullet to fall down. The person who caused it to fall had to retrieve the bullet with their teeth. While people did still send gifts of food on Christmas, New Year's Eve and New Year's Day was still the main gift-giving holiday. And just like today, the truly wealthy enjoyed going away for Christmas to country homes, or more exotic destinations. Nice for some. Now we are entering a room decorated for Twelfth Night in 1830. By this point in Regency England, it was increasingly trendy to celebrate Christmas in more elaborate ways. People were really enamored by the Tudor Christmases of the past, and they wanted to experience it for themselves. That said, this room only has a bit of holly draped over the frames. But while they weren't decorating their houses too much, they certainly were out celebrating. In an ever-industrializing society, people were nostalgic for a time of roast sides of beef, wassailing, mummer's plays, lords of misrule, and the Yule log. In reality, the increasingly uptight English high society would have been horrified at these traditions, dismissing them as vulgar and déclassé. So they adapted them to their modern needs, cherry-picking old traditions through rose-tinted glasses. One of my favorite traditions that didn't make a return was the Lord of Misrule. Each year, the master of an estate would elect a lord of misrule from the household members. This man would then be the lord, the master of ceremonies for 12 days of debauchery and misbehavior, entitled to make anyone in the house do what he wished. That does not sound fun. Look at me coming over all Puritan. People began to celebrate the medieval Twelfth Night, traditionally marked on January 6th. This event combined elements of the Feast of the Epiphany, commemorating when the three wise men visited the stable in Bethlehem, and the end of 12 days of feasting that originated with Roman Saturnalia traditions. In the Middle Ages, Twelfth Night incorporated disguises and role reversal, like the Lord of Misrule, as well as a bean king. In this room, perhaps later in the evening, a bean king and queen will be chosen. They'll find a dried bean and a dried pea, respectively, in the special Twelfth Night cake. It might be a servant who ends up being the bean king, and therefore his master will have to serve him. The game should be totally random, but it was often rigged. A resurgence of these Twelfth Night traditions was at its most popular throughout the end of the 18th century and into the beginning of the 19th. We can see some clothing and fancy dress costumes hanging around this room. This family has been playing a beloved game where they dress like the Twelfth Night characters on a set of cards and play elaborate games of charades. Here we can see a replica of the Twelfth Night cake. The rich bought increasingly elaborate cakes decorated with papier-mâché characters, each with a layer of march pane as a nod to the 16th century custom of the lavish march pane disc on the Christmas table. Around this time, more and and people enjoyed going for walks to look at the lights and decorations. By the end of the 19th century, Twelfth Night had declined in popularity. The government and most businesses had standardized the celebratory days as the 25th and 26th in 1871, and so people simply didn't have the time off. Today, in modern Britain, the only whisper we have of Twelfth Night is our practice of leaving Christmas decorations up until January 6th. If you walk around most British neighborhoods on this day, you'll see all of the discarded Christmas trees lined up on the curb, ready for special Christmas tree collection by the council. Here we are at Christmas Eve 1870. We're at the height of the Victorian era, with Christmas decorations more like what we're used to seeing today. Christmas as we know it is mostly a Victorian invention, as Queen Victoria's consort, Prince Albert, was a huge fan of the German Christmas traditions he grew up with. Though Albert's life was tragically short, the mourning Queen Victoria was dedicated to preserving his memory and the things that were important to him. There's two things in this room that we consider integral to a modern Christmas, and that's the presence of a Christmas tree and Christmas cards. While we tend to think of the Christmas tree in England as entirely Victorian, that isn't exactly true. They appear as early as 1790. King George III's wife, Queen Charlotte, missed her German childhood traditions and decorated fir trees inside Windsor Castle. Queen Caroline, the consort of George IV, was also German, and she continued this custom. As for Victoria, she would have been familiar with this practice, as her mother, Duchess of Kent, and her aunt, Queen Adelaide, were both of German heritage. In her diary, a 14-year-old Princess Victoria writes of her mother placing gifts beneath two large round tables, on which were placed trees hung with lights and sugar ornaments. But it was really Prince Albert and his wife's doting on his likes and preferences that made the Christmas tree as popular as it is today. In 1848, newspapers across the country published photos of the couple with five of their children in front of the royal tree. Of course, the upper classes wanted to be in style, and so they too began decorating trees. From this point on, we begin to see trees decorated with gilded fruit, dolls, trumpets, fiddles, tiny furniture, and boxes filled with sweets and tiny gifts. We can see here in this room that the tree is placed on a table in a pot, which was standard. However, by the 1880s, homegrown Norway spruce began to take the place of the imported German Sprengelbaum. The trees get larger and more affordable, and more common amongst regular people. Unlike the Christmas tree, the Christmas card, which you can see here, is a purely English invention. Sir Henry Cole, who was the first director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, I talk about him in my video of the oddities of the V&A linked just above, was the first to come up with the idea of a commercial Christmas card. He had his friend John Calcott Horsley come up with the design in 1848. He was trying to save himself from having to write dozens of individualized letters to his friends, but the idea caught on. Realizing his own stroke of genius, he had thousands printed and sold them for a shilling each, which would be the equivalent to about £3.75 today. This becomes more common in the 1860s amongst the upper classes, and the introduction of postcards in the 1870s made sending mass-produced Christmas cards even more affordable and popular. To further distinguish themselves, the middle classes then began sending elaborate and embossed cards decorated with lace, pressed flowers, and seaweed. Victorians were fascinated by all things gothic, and they were particularly fascinated by the old Christmas songs, which they often set to new music, and people would gather around the piano and sing together. Carols as we know them were born. Tell me about your favorite in the comments. Mine is, and always will be, Boney M. Here we are in room 7, Christmas Eve 1913. There is one major difference between this Christmas and Christmases that we've seen previously, the presence of Father Christmas. These few gifts under the tree are undoubtedly from him. Now Father Christmas had been known in England since medieval times, and during the Civil War, royalists used his image as a mascot for defending traditional Christmas customs. I love that sometimes he was called Mr. Christmas or Sir Christmas, that just makes me laugh. Some experts think he derives from the Norse god Odin, who we had a long tradition of worshipping in Viking England, as Odin wears a blue hooded cloak and has a long white beard. Father Christmas was always dressed in a robe and carried holly or evergreens near his head, so there are some similarities. Now let's talk about Saint Nicholas, who has a much clearer history. Saint Nick was a Christian saint from Turkey, martyred during the rule of Roman Emperor Diocletian. His saint's day is December 6th. Throughout Europe, children prepare for a visit from Saint Nick or other strange Christmas visitors on the evening of December 5th. For instance, in the Netherlands, children put out their wooden clogs filled with straw for Saint Nicholas's horse. If they've been good, the straw is replaced with sweets in the morning. If they've been bad, the straw is untouched and a birch rod appears next to their shoes. Dutch settlers in New England took Saint Nicholas, which became Sinterklaas, to America with them, and he then became known as Santa Claus. However, here in England, we've kind of melded this tradition with our own Father Christmas traditions, and it's common to hear children refer to both names. Tell me about your own family's Christmas traditions. Do you do anything special from your culture? Do you have any special Christmas visitors? I really love reading your comments, so let me know in the comment section below. To learn more about the strange Christmas witches, creepy Christmas traditions, and unsettling holiday visitors, watch my video linked above. As many of you likely know, the common depiction of Santa Claus or Father Christmas dressed up all in red with jolly red cheeks dates to 1931 in America. Illustrator Haddon Sundblom began to draw an annual depiction of Santa for Coca-Cola, and of course, he heavily featured the iconic Coca-Cola red. Children could expect sweets, small toys, dolls, and games under the tree and hung ornaments on the boughs, or increasingly placed in the stockings hung by the fire on the foot of their bed or even on the sofa, all from jolly old Saint Nick. Now we're heading into the middle of the 20th century, and we can see that a lot of the natural decorations, like pine boughs that we've enjoyed to this point, are being replaced with plastic baubles and mass-produced holiday decorations. The Museum of the Home has chosen to decorate this Art Deco living room rather sparsely, claiming that the man who lives here is an airline pilot who won't be home for Christmas, but I really wish we could see more of the traditional trappings from the 1930s. This is clearly the home of a bachelor without any of the toys and gifts and decorations associated with a Christmas with children. Mass-produced goods were more affordable than ever before, and that was well-timed, as fewer and fewer people had access to woodlands or green spaces where they could pick pine, holly, rosemary, and mistletoe. And check out his artificial tree! This invention would have really impressed your friends, as it showed that you could keep up with the latest technology and trends. Gone are the days of candles, which would have melted your artificial trees and replaced instead by electric strings of light. Many strings of lights in this era were figural, with the shape of Santa, snowmen, or fairies. I remember some really wild lavalamp-style hurricane lights on my Christmas tree growing up. These new decorations could be packed up and used year after year. I remember in my grandparents' house they were kept in wooden mandarin orange crates. Does that sound familiar to anyone? Another common decoration of the era were paper chains that you can see here, made with newly mass-produced colored paper, fun crafts for kids to make. Of course, the people living in rooms like this had no idea what was about to hit them, quite literally, with World War II and the devastating Battle of Britain bombs. Most people would have enjoyed one of their last peacetime Christmases before all hell broke loose. It's Christmas Day 1978. The room depicts a Hackney family celebrating a Caribbean British Christmas, enjoying a mix of customs. The saturated colors and decorations really remind me of my grandparents' home in the 1980s. Of course, in many ways this is a very typical mid-century living room for anybody in Britain, as people shook off the restrictions of wartime rations, which lasted until 1954. The people who live in this home are members of what we call the Windrush generation, Caribbean British subjects who came to this country to help rebuild after World War II, but who did not always receive the warm welcome they deserved. The West Indies front room was curated by Dr. Michael McMillan, a playwright, artist, and curator, whose parents immigrated to England from St. Vincent. He included items from the local community into the room, including the freestanding radiogram with 7-inch records on top, which belonged to a woman called Ivy, who came from Jamaica in 1959. You can see the crochet doilies and birds, which were made by Michael's mom, Lita, and family friends, Cynthia and Linda. This room is warm and vibrant and filled with fun, but it was also in the midst of 1978, often called the winter of discontent. Just like today, people across Britain were experiencing financial hardship and an energy crisis that caused power cuts and oil shortages. Many people were only working a three-day working week, and it was extremely expensive or even impossible to heat your home properly. That really sounds familiar. The family in this room are gathered in the living room, and they're using this paraffin heater that you can see here. Even though it was an unusually cold Christmas in 1978, everybody is having a great time inside, forgetting about the economic hardship for a short time at Christmas, while they play cards, dominoes, and crack jokes to celebrate Christmas, just like we still do today. This may be a Caribbean Londoner's Christmas here in Hackney, but I can't get over how much this 1978 room looks like my grandparents' house in Canada at Christmas time. It's really nostalgic. Now it's 1987, and we're in our final room. This is a British Indian sitting room as they prepare for Christmas. People of South Asian origin have lived in this country for at least 500 years. Just like with the Caribbean immigration I just spoke about in the last room, there was a huge increase in South Asian immigration to the United Kingdom in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. Today, people of Indian origin comprise about 1.4 million people in the country, and they're the largest single visible ethnic minority group. This room was designed by Nutcut, which is a production and arts company that focuses on live performance, dance, installations, circus, and more. The organization is led by Simi Gupta and A.J. Chhabra, and they worked with the Museum of the Home to create this room in preparation for this year's Diwali. The room was so popular that they made a few slight changes. Now the family is packing away their Diwali decorations and preparing instead for Christmas. Now Christmas is not a Hindu holiday, however many people who follow the Hindu faith do celebrate Christmas as a fun family festival. The presence of the mannequins in this room is a little bit confusing until you realize that this family makes saris and salwar kameez at home, and here's their sewing machine. While the parents are finishing orders for saris and salwar kameez, the children of the room have decorated their small tree, and they're watching the British classic The Snowman on television before they head to bed. This room is directly inspired by the childhood memories of Nutcut's founders, A.J. and Simi, and you can see references in the room to different places around the world that this family has connections, like Malaysia, India, and Fiji. In some ways, Diwali and Christmas share a lot in common. It's a time to light candles, put on your best brightly coloured clothing, spend time with your family, and eat delicious treats, and it's really wonderful to see these holidays being combined here in modern Britain. Well, that's the end of our walk through Christmas Past at the Museum of the Home. If you enjoyed this video, like, subscribe, and leave me a comment below about your favourite room in the museum, or your personal favourite Christmas tradition. I'll see you the next time I'm in the museum, and Merry Christmas!