As far as I remember, we would often visit Duke of Gloucester (DoG Street in Williamsburg on Christmas afternoon to look at the Christmas door decorations. I might not remember all there was about them, but I think the decorators of the houses in the colonial area had to decorate with materials that would have been available during the colonial period. Since they had active trade routes with the Caribbean and further south, they could use things like citrus fruits that would not grow locally but could be obtained (though, it is doubtful that (1) colonial residents would have decorated at all for Christmas and (2) that they would have used what was probably very expensive fruit to decorate!). Nonetheless, it was always interesting to see what each house decorator did, and I think we would often go to the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller museum to see if the winners agreed with what we thought should be the winners.
One house that we always admired was way down at the end of DoG Street near the Capitol. It was a brick house with holes in the bricks into which the decorator of that house would place a shiny red apple.
This year, I saw an article about the background and some funny stories around it... thought others might enjoy: http://www.history.org/almanack/life/christmas/dec_apples.cfm
The article also explains why the house has those holes in the brick facade.
No comments:
Post a Comment