BLOOMINGTON, IL -- An authentic, Victorian holiday celebration will be featured during “Christmas at Clover Lawn” scheduled for November 25 - December 31, 2005, at the David Davis Mansion State Historic Site in Bloomington, Illinois.  Visitors will be delighted to discover what the real Victorian Christmas was like, and will be thrilled that they may touch and taste holiday items in the Mansion.

 

            Bathed in the simulated gaslight of the Victorian era, the 36-room Davis mansion will be festooned with boughs of evergreens, glittering ornaments, antique toys, and Christmas trees in almost every room.  An exhibit of an authentic German putz (village scene) under the sitting room tree and a rare collection of antique Christmas ornaments (ca. 1870 through 1910) will complete the scene.

 

            Visitors will be encouraged to touch, hold and examine replicas of authentic ornaments, cards, candy containers, books, toys and many other Victorian holiday items to see what they looked like and how they were made.  They will also get a chance to taste a variety of Victorian Christmas sweets, including marzipan, sugarplums, mincemeat pies, plum pudding, and chocolate cockroaches.

     

            From 1870 to 1910, during the golden era of ornament making, Victorian Christmas trees positively sparkled with a variety of glass figurative ornaments, many decorated with crinkled silver wire; cotton-batting figures decorated with crepe paper and tinsel; hand-blown, heavy glass globes called kugels; and Dresdens, the most exquisite paper ornaments ever made.  The cottage industries in Germany and in the U.S., which

cranked out these Victorian ornaments by the thousands, also produced other items that are much sought after by collectors today:  Raphael Tuck paper toys; crepe paper and scrap paper dolls; lead-weighted candle holders; wax angels; beaded tin decorations; and

electric light bulbs in the shape of Santas, fruits, and flowers.  All of these authentic decorations and more will be exhibited at the mansion this year.

 

            Visitors may tour the mansion free of charge Wednesday through Sunday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.  On Saturday, December 3, there will be special holiday workshops for children from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the Mansion’s barn/stable.  There, children may make and take home their very own copy of one of the authentic nineteenth-century ornaments, which they will see on the mansion tour.  The workshops are offered as part of the Once Upon a Holiday Weekend.  All Christmas decorations are funded by the David Davis Mansion Foundation, and all daytime, public tours during December are brought to the public free of charge through the efforts of more than two hundred volunteers.

 

            Other special exhibits designed for children during December include a unique collection of antique toys, a teddy bear tea party, and a rotating Christmas tree.  Altogether, more than eleven Christmas trees will be featured from parlor to pantry, including a 12-foot Victorian tree in the sitting room, a traditional Pennsylvania Dutch snow tree, and three German goose feather trees.

 

            The Clover Lawn Museum Shop, operated by the David Davis Mansion Foundation, will have many of the mansion’s unique Christmas ornaments for sale during the holiday season - many of these items are not available elsewhere in central Illinois.  The David Davis Mansion Foundation and the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency, which administers the site, are co-sponsors of the December events.

 

The David Davis Mansion is also represented in the “Christmas at the White House” exhibit that opens November 25 at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum in Springfield.  The Davis Mansion tree in the Museum’s Illinois Gallery will be decorated with both authentic and replica Victorian ornaments made of wax, cotton, tinsel, chromolithograph scraps, embossed cardboard, crepe paper, candies, edible dough and blown glass—just as it might have been decorated over a century ago.  Like the Victorian children who gazed in wonder at these fanciful creations, you may want to try finding the glass pickle hidden somewhere on this tree.  If you succeed, you will have good luck for the coming year.  While the Lincolns were living in Washington D.C., the family of David Davis (Lincoln’s friend and appointee to the U.S. Supreme Court) was celebrating Christmas in Bloomington, just as the Lincolns had celebrated Christmas in Springfield a decade earlier—buying presents for family and friends and decorating Bloomington’s First Presbyterian Church with evergreens and Christmas trees.  Twenty-five years after Lincoln’s death—when the Industrial Revolution was in full swing and manufactured toys, Christmas ornaments and other goods were more plentiful—the lavish Victorian Christmas depicted at the Davis Mansion had become the traditional holiday celebration for many prosperous Americans.  

 

The David Davis Mansion State Historic Site, built in the 1870s for U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Davis and his wife, Sarah, is open Wednesday through Sunday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.  The site will be closed on Mondays, Tuesdays, Christmas Day and New Year’s Day.  The Mansion is located at 1000 E. Monroe in Bloomington.