3D Snowflakes

Stories Behind Popular Holiday Decorations

Are decorations art?​

Stories Behind Popular Holiday Decorations

Are decorations art?​

​Sketchbook work:

​Answer the following on a blank sheet of paper or in your sketchbook:

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​Question: Are decorations a form of art? Why or why not?

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​How to start your answer: "Decorations are/are not a form of art because________________."

​Decorative Arts

​The decorative arts are arts or crafts whose object is the design and manufacture of objects that are both beautiful and functional. It includes most of the arts making objects for the interiors of buildings, and interior design, but not usually architecture. Ceramic art, metalwork, furniture, jewelery, fashion, various forms of the textile arts and glassware are major groupings (wikepedia.org).

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​Copy and paste this link to have a better understanding of decorative arts!

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​https://video.link/w/B08Kc

​The Colors of Christmas were inspired by:

A medieval play. The colors are thought to be inspired by the Paradise tree, a fir tree with apples that was used as a prop in “The Paradise Play,” an eleventh-century play about the Christian view of Creation. The tree represented the Garden of Eden, its red apples were a symbol of the knowledge that led to Adam’s fall, and the green fir represented eternal life.

Open Ended

The Colors of Christmas: What inspired the colors of Christmas?

​The Christmas Tree

​Though Germans first brought decorated Christmas trees into their homes another culture embraced evergreen trees even earlier. Ancient Egyptians decked out their homes in green palm rushes on the winter solstice to celebrate the sun god Ra’s recovery from the ills of winter, which they believed symbolized life conquering death.

Multiple Choice

Who were early adopters of what we know as a Christmas tree?

• The Germans

• The Italians

• The Romans

• The Egyptians

​Edible Ornaments

​The tradition of adding ornaments to trees started in Germany in the 1600s, when fruits and nuts were laid on evergreens. Manufactured ornaments became the style when an image of Queen Victoria and the German Prince Albert’s Christmas tree, decked in baubles, was published in 1848 in “The Illustrated London News.”

​String of Lights

Thomas Edison created the first strand of lights and wrapped them around his lab in Menlo Park, California. But it was Edison’s partner, Edward H. Johnson, who put the first string of electric Christmas tree lights together and strung them around his tree in 1882. 

Fill in the Blanks

When was the first string of lights created?

​Gingerbread Houses

​“Lebkuchenhaeusle” first emerged in Germany in the 16th century as ornate edible houses decked with gold leaf and foil. But it was the 1812 publication of the children’s fairytale “Hansel and Gretel” that is believed to have mainstreamed the holiday tradition of building gingerbread houses.

​Stockings

​Upon learning from villagers that a father could not pull together a dowry for his three daughters to wed and was unwilling to accept money from others. Story says that St. Nicholas slid down the man’s chimney and slipped gold coins into is daughters’ newly laundered stockings, which happened to hang by the fire. When the family came upon the gold the next day, their problems were solved, and a new Christmas tradition was born.

​Pointsettas

​Poinsettias first caught the eye of U.S. minister to Mexico Joel R. Poinsett in 1828, when Christmas festivities in the U.S. were beginning to take off. Upon sighting the flowers known as “flor de nochebuena,” or the “Christmas Eve flower,” in Mexico, Poinsett brought the red-and-green flowers home as a symbol of the holiday season.

Multiple Choice

Where did Poinsettias/The Christmas Eve Flower originate?

• Mexico

• Cuba

• Brazil

• Argentina

​Reference

​https://www.bobvila.com/slideshow/20-surprising-stories-behind-popular-christmas-decorations-53151