Poshdeluxe

history is cool.

check out this article about the evolution of christmas…

and, as usual, here’s my favorite excerpts for lazy people, featuring
my favorite new word, gimcracks… as in, “i hope there aren’t any
gimcracks with my name on them under the xmas tree.”:

p.s. gewgaws is a close second.

There are several popular misconceptions about the origins of the
American version of the holiday. To start, Christmas was actually
suppressed in New England’s colonial days. The Puritans found no
affirmative command to celebrate Christmas in the Bible and, being good
Calvinists, frowned on the celebration. They even outlawed it for a
time during the 17th century. Opposition to the holiday lingered well
into the 19th century, when many New England children were required to
attend school on Christmas Day. So take down your Currier & Ives
prints of winter sleigh rides to Grandma’s house in New England. True
New England grandmas disdained Christmas - well into the 1800’s.

*

When rural Americans moved to the cities in pursuit of employment and
the other attractions of urban life, they brought along their rural
habits of gift giving. But their new jobs in factories or offices -
unrelated to the agricultural cycle - left them with no off season to
fashion presents. As a consequence, they bought small, inexpensive
manufactured items to give to their families and their new urban
friends.

Figurines and other ceramic pieces were typical, as were wall hangings,
inexpensive jewelry and small craft pieces like a framed “Home Sweet
Home” sampler. A magazine writer in 1913 described them as “tawdry and
gaudy gimcracks, flimsy gewgaws, ephemeral and unbeautiful; purchased
often with lassitude, received with distaste, and soon relegated to the
limbo of attic or ash heap.”‘