|
Don't Break Your Neck Decorating This Year
It's an average of 48-58 degrees during the day here lately and I've been sweating. I'm sweating the idea of climbing a 16 foot ladder to put up the Christmas lights again this year. My wife, of course, thinks this task is a breeze. Guess she's never had to lean out backwards over concrete 14 feet in the air to blindly shove a plastic clip under the shingles when your fingers are freezing at the joints.
I've always wondered who started this tradition. I looked up the history so that when I finally get around to building my time machine I can go back and foil their plans to market them. Seriously though, decorating during December has been around for a very long time, as in over 2000 years. Hanging garland of evergreen predates the Christmas celebration at least a 1000 years. In fact it was the Romans who started it during the pagan holiday of Saturnalia.
Saturnalia was a huge feast dedicated to the god Saturn. It was celebrated for a whole week between December 17 and 23. This holiday was very much like Christmas in that people traded gifts and decorated their homes. Slaves were even given a socially acceptable reprieve from the subservience of their bondage during this time. It's probably safe to say that most everyone was resonably happy around this time.
The Christian church condemned this practice, but the joy and celebration eventually adapted itself into the Christmas holiday celebrated on December 25. Many people kept the tradition of hanging strings of evergreen branches and wreaths during the Christmas celebration. The decorating of an actual tree really only become socially acceptable during and after the reign of England's Queen Victoria (mid 1800's).
 By the late 1800's the marketing genius Edward Johnson (one of Thomas Edison's assistants) came up with the idea of producing Christmas lights. This guy's whimsical product set the precedent making sure people could use more of that new fangled electricity at the time. Needless to say, his idea was hugely popular and public areas decorated in lights became a common sight in many cities by 1912.
So for those of you whose life won't hang in the balance of a steady ladder this year, you can find countless less life threatening decorating projects in the two powerhouses of home accent magazines...Martha Stewart Living and Real Simple.
|