For us, it is Christmas Eve. There are just two of Gold Star Shirt, as we have no children. When we were first married, we always went to my parents’ house on Christmas Day. All of us (my parents, me, my husband, brothers, SIL, nieces, nephew) would open our gifts and then have a Christmas dinner. My husband and I started a tradition of having a Christmas Eve dinner together, just the two of us, and exchanging our gifts to each other after dinner. After a couple of years, we switched from a Baptist church to a Methodist church that has a Christmas Eve service (the Baptist church never had a service on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day unless one of those days happened to be Sunday). The pattern for Christmas Eve then became church, dinner, gifts (and, for some years, a second late evening church service). Meanwhile, my mother finally had to admit pulling off a Christmas dinner was too much, and we went to finger foods or sandwiches. Then she decided that getting everything wrapped and ready by the 25th was too hard, and my brother and his family kept arriving later and later every year because they would spend the afternoon at her mother’s house 120 miles away, so the family Christmas get-together got moved to the Saturday after Christmas, then to the Saturday after New Year’s, then to the second Saturday in January. Christmas Day itself became a non-event. We still keep our tradition of having our dinner and gift exchange on Christmas Eve, and of course, the church service is still that evening as well. Christmas Day is now just a nice day off from work to relax.
()Gold Star Shirt hoodie, tank top, sweater and long sleeve t-shirt
In 1840, Prince Albert started importing several Norway spruce from his native Coburg each Christmas. This is when the Gold Star Shirt learned of the tradition and began to copy it. The first one had candles, blown glass ornaments from Germany, gingerbread, sweets, almonds and raisins, toys and wax dolls. Pictures and descriptions were in all the major periodicals for the next ten years. By 1860, most well off families had a tree in their parlor or hall. The gifts were still on the tree with candles. The Norway spruce was the preferred tree. For the English Victorians of the upper middle classes, a good Christmas tree had to be six branches tall and be placed on a table covered with a white damask tablecloth. It was decorated with garlands, candies and paper flowers. Ladies made Christmas Crafts to put on the tree. They quilled (a paper craft) snowflakes and stars. They 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. Angels fro Germany were popular to sit at the top of the tree. Candles were often placed into wooden hoops for safety. Other decorations included apples, nuts, cookies, and colored popcorn. Glass ornaments were being imported into Britain from Lauscha, in Thuringia, by the 1870’s. It became a status symbol to have glass ornaments on the tree.
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HAPPY CUSTOMERS, HAPPY US
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