Christmas decorations in No. 3 Ravensworth Terrace, in Beamish, County Durham. It forms part of the Beamish Living Museum, and shows a dentist’s house as might might have been at Christmas in Edwardian times.
IN 1800, King George III’s German-born wife, Charlotte, set up a decorated Christmas tree at a children’s party. Her grand-daughter Queen Victoria recalled that a candle-lit tree, hung with sugar ornaments, subsequently became a feature of the royal family’s Christmas. It was a novelty for England, but before long a royal family custom became first a national fashion, and then a national tradition.
There were echoes in it of English mediaeval mystery plays, performed on Christmas Eve, which had dramatised Adam and Eve in Eden beside a Tree of Life laden with sweet fruit. And those plays recalled even more ancient prayers,* that spoke of the Cross as the Tree of Life, on which Christ hung ‘like a cluster of grapes, dropping the life-bearing sweetness of the whole world’s salvation’.
Queen Charlotte’s tree, with its candles and its candy, brought a little of the sweetness of Paradise back to Christmas in England.
Sunday Matins, Greek Church.
Précis
Queen Charlotte, German-born wife of King George III, introduced decorated Christmas trees into Britain at a children’s party in 1800. But they were not without precedent in English or Christian culture. Trees hung with sweet fruit had been a feature of mediaeval mystery plays at Christmas-time, and had served as symbols of Christ on the Cross in ancient prayers. (58 / 60 words)
