A Victorian Christmas, And Special Events, At Barnum Museum

By Shannon Hicks

BRIDGEPORT — Visitors to The Barnum Museum through January 2 will be able to feast their eyes upon some of the most intricate and beautiful Victorian Christmas decorations available anywhere.

“Celebrate the Season at The Barnum Museum: Victorian Christmas Traditions” educates visitors about early American trees that were decorated with fruit, nuts, candles, cookies, and small handmade trinkets that were taken off the tree and given as gifts on Christmas morning. The special Barnum Museum exhibit chronicles a more innocent time in the history of the holidays in America.

The short-term presentation began its annual appearance at The Barnum only a few years ago, shortly after the arrival of Kathleen Maher as the museum’s curator.

“I had done this kind of interpretation in the past and was actually surprised that it hadn’t been done here,” Ms Maher said last week.

“We wanted to do more than just put something seasonal into the gift shop,” added Susan Agamy, the executive director of The Barnum Museum. “These kind of exhibits are generally very popular for the public.”

According to notes in a brochure that accompanies the exhibit, during the 17th and 18th centuries “Puritan America suppressed, and even at one point outlawed, the celebration of Christmas, arguing that the festivities of the holiday were derived from pagan rituals and not defined by religious teachings.” Christmas had long been a European tradition, but it had not come across the pond with the Pilgrims.

The starkness continued through the early part of the 19th Century, the brochure continues, yet as society developed, diverse cultures began to emerge. By the mid 1840s — after the 1818 publication of Washington Irving’s The Sketch Book, Clement C. Moore’s poem “A Visit from St Nicholas” in 1822, the publication of Dickens’ The Pickwick Papers in 1836, and then his A Christmas Carol in 1843 — each of which “revealed qualities of a nostalgic, although fictitious Christmas, stimulating the imagination [and a] … Desire to recapture a time perceived as romantic, mythical, simple, and free of modern challenges, fostered the manifestation of Christmas… Victorian Americans found comfort in the idealization of old Christmas and sought to elaborate upon and interpret the literary past which, in short, became a creation, an invented tradition.”

In his journals and other records, the first time P.T. Barnum mentions Christmas, according to Barnum Museum Curator Kathleen Maher, is shortly before he brought the opera star Jenny Lind to America for the first time in September 1850.

“Christmas really wasn’t an American custom before that time,” Ms Maher said during a gallery talk on December 16.

The exhibition has been set up in two rooms at the museum, the circa 1847 re-creation of the library at Iranistan, Barnum’s first mansion in Bridgeport, on the main floor and in the re-created drawing room from the Harral-Wheeler mansion, another famous former Bridgeport residence. Mannequins in the upper room have been dressed in costumes from the museum’s collection.

“We’ve decorated these two rooms to represent an era when Christmas really began to get an identity across the country,” Ms Maher explained. “Earlier celebrations were very divided between the very upper and lower classes. There was nothing for the middle classes.”

What visitors cannot help but notice is the size of the trees on view. Victorian-era Christmas trees were tabletop displays, and the trees in the first years of America’s Christmas observations were much more utilitarian than their followers.

The tree in the Iranistan library is no more than three feet tall, and it is covered with fruits and nuts. Trees of the 1850s, explained Ms Maher, were often adorned with “small trinkets, cookies, fruits, gilded nuts, and candies, illuminated for minutes with tiny candles at the tip of each branch.”

These trees, she said, were set up for Christmas Day and meant to be stripped of their treasures by a family.

“Most of the celebration was about food and community, less about the Nativity,” she said last week.

A decade later trees were slightly larger — as is seen in the exhibit’s presentation on the museum’s second floor — and they were often festooned with American flags, declaring a family’s patriotic fervor during the Civil War.

“Ornamentation became much more elaborate as the century progress,” said Ms Maher. “Whatever was accessible was used. American flags and bunting were very popular. Patriotism was very popular then and it carried over into the holiday decorations.”

By this time the natural elements and edible treats on the tree were being joined by small cloth or simple paper wrapped packages under the tree for children on Christmas morning.

“It was a slow change,” Ms Maher said of the gradual growth in the height of Christmas trees. “The trees were getting larger, but they’re still smaller than what we’re used to today.”

This year’s exhibition is limited to the two rooms described here, but the museum is hoping to expand its presentation by as early as next year.

The People’s Bank Gallery at the Barnum Museum is currently featuring “William Brinley’s Amazing Miniature Circus.” Prepare to be astounded with the complexity and detail in this circus where one foot equals just three-quarters of an inch.

The monumental work of folk art is dedicated to illustrating the wonderful world of the circus and is from one of the world’s most talented wood carvers, William Brinley of Meriden. Covering more than 1,100 square feet, the exhibit is historically accurate right down to the Menagerie; Jumbo, one of P.T. Barnum’s most famous elephants; and the 48-star flag flying above the Big Top.

The Barnum Museum also has three floors of exhibits that illustrate the extraordinary life of P.T. Barnum.

Museum admission is $5 for adults, $4 for senior citizens and college students, $3 for ages 4 to 17, and free ages 3 and under. Regular museum hours are Tuesday through Saturday from 10 am to 4:30 pm, and Sunday from noon to 4:30 pm.

Please note the museum will be open on Monday, December 27, from 10 am to 4:30 pm, which will allow more visitors of all ages to enjoy the exhibits and offerings during the school break. On Friday, December 31, the museum will host ongoing crafts projects for its visitors.

The museum is at 820 Main Street in Bridgeport; signs are posted from I-95 and the Route 25 Connector. Call 203-331-1104 or visit www.BarnumMuseum.org for additional information.