'Tis the season to be jolly.........

‘Tis the season to be jolly.....................
and so I created two mosaics of some of my favourite ruby red Christmas tree baubles to share
with everyone at Mary's Ruby Tuesday @ Work of the Poet, Tam's 3 or more Tuesday @ The Gypsy's Corner and Susan's Deck the Halls Party which is beginning today @ Thoughts From Over The Rainbow.

For many years I have used a Christmas List Book, which I bought during a visit to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, to keep a record of cards and gifts; given and received, festive decorations; where & what, shopping lists and menu’s ; what worked, what didn’t!
The book contains many wonderful Victorian Christmas illustrations and verses and I shall be sharing them with you all during December.

The Victoria and Albert Tree
In 1846, the popular Royals, Queen Victoria and her German Prince, Albert, were illustrated in the Illustrated London News. They were standing with their children around a Christmas Tree. Unlike the previous Royal family, Victoria was very popular with her subjects, and what was done at Court immediately became fashionable - not only in Britain, but with fashion-conscious East Coast American Society. The English Christmas Tree had arrived!
Decorations were still of a 'home-made' variety. Young Ladies spent hours at Christmas Crafts, quilling snowflakes and stars, sewing little pouches for secret gifts and paper baskets with sugared almonds in them. Small bead decorations, fine drawn out silver tinsel came from Germany together with beautiful Angels to sit at the top of the tree. Candles were often placed into wooden hoops for safety.
Mid-Victorian Tree
In 1850's Lauscha began to produce fancy shaped glass bead garlands for the trees, and short garlands made from necklace 'bugles' and beads. These were readily available in Germany but not produced in sufficient quantities to export to Britain. The Rauschgoldengel was a common sight. Literally, 'Tingled-angel', bought from the Thuringian Christmas markets, and dressed in pure gilded tin.
The 1860's English Tree had become more innovative than the delicate trees of earlier decades. Small toys were popularly hung on the branches, but still most gifts were placed on the table under the tree.
Source: The Christmas Archives.