English_Christmases_past_(993)-30381
The Geffrye Museum in east London is a hidden gem, a showcase for the changing styles of living rooms in English middle-class homes. Visitors walk through time, via the 11 living rooms in its permanent exhibition that show everyday interiors dating from 1600 to the present.
Visiting is always a treat, but Christmas is the very best time to go. From Tuesday until early January the Geffrye's rooms will have a festive air, as the staff put up accurate period decorations and display the Christmas food of the time.
There's also a programme of events, focusing on celebrating a Victorian Christmas, including card-making workshops and a talk about 19th-century Christmas food.
The Geffrye's deputy director, Christine Lalumia, is an art historian who, after 18 years at the museum, has become an expert in the evolution of Christmas in England. “Christmas as a celebration can be viewed almost as a social phenomenon,” she says. “Some generations have emphasised the religious aspect; others have played it down. It means many things to many people. At some points, food will be extraordinarily special; at others it will be just a throwaway.”
Lalumia says the staff never impose their own sense of Christmas jollity and colour where it didn't exist – during much of English history, Christmas was a subdued affair. Not so for the late Tudors and Stuarts, who celebrated hard, from Christmas day to Epiphany, in a riot of adults-only feasting, bawdy dancing and games. New Year's Day was the highpoint of the festival. Food historian Kate Colquhoun says: “There are account books from Tudor manors showing what was laid in for the 12 days of Christmas ... though the highly spiced meat and fruit dishes were luxury winter foods, not simply Christmas dishes.”
So the museum's first room, “A Hall in 1630”, is decorated with evergreens (a pagan symbol of hope and fertility that early Christians adoped to symbolise everlasting life). And the table is heaped with colourful sweet and savoury dishes, forming the second course of the New Year banquet.
There is perfectly reproduced crystallised fruit and endearingly, wonkily reproduced walnuts and eggs and bacon. It turns out to be deliberate: “Tudors just loved visual games with food – they loved making one thing look like another thing,” Lalumia says. The walnuts and eggs and bacon are in fact very accurate modern reproductions of the fake food that Tudors loved to display, made using sugar paste (or sugar plate as it was then called).
Sugar was very expensive in 1630, and a huge treat reserved for special occasions. By the end of the 17th century, sugar was far cheaper, and the mixed sweet and savoury course shown in this room became the “dessert” course we still have, with no savoury component.
Oliver Cromwell's Puritan government banned Christmas by an act of parliament in 1647. Lalumia has “never believed for a second that people ever stopped celebrating at home”. Although the ban ended in 1660, from the late 17th century onwards, Christmas went out of fashion. In the 1695 room there are still simple decorations, and anchovies and olives to eat that would have been offered to guests along with punch.
But by 1745, an early Georgian parlour is decorated with only a garland and a few sprigs of evergreen. The only bright colours in the room are two jellies in tall glasses – one orange and one yellow – that have been offered, along with a glass of wine, to a guest who has arrived too late for supper. By the end of the 18th century, there's no hint of Christmas as we know it, although the table is set for a dinner of “rost [sic] beef and plum pudding”, served together – plum pudding only became a separate course from the mid-19th century.
Beef was widely served by the middle classes as the central dish of the Christmas dinner until well into the 19th century. (Turkeys had been available in England since Tudor times, but the habit of eating turkey dinner on Christmas day took hold only once the railways were built, and allowed easy transportation of these big birds for large families.)
From the 1830s room onwards, the colour and volume of decorations return, topped off by a magnificent centrepiece Twelfth Night cake, and from then on Christmas was “absolutely a full-on Christian festival”, according to Lalumia.
It also became the Christmas we still celebrate today. The custom of a family Christmas tree really took off after the royal family was pictured around one in 1848.
Many of the Christmas rooms at the Geffrye Museum look incredibly attractive, and it's hard to pick a favourite. Even the experts find it hard to say which historical period boasted the best Christmas celebrations and food.
Colquhoun, who will be speaking about Victorian food at the museum on December 4, says: “The Middle Ages were another high point – with the festivities culminating on Twelfth Night, with boar's head and brawn, mince pies, roaring fires in the great halls. In an age before freezers and microwaves, before fridges and processed foods, the significance of a surfeit of meaty richness in the middle of sterile winter cannot be over-emphasised.”
Meanwhile, Lalumia says she would either “snuggle in with the Edwardians, who celebrated with joy and gusto just before the real consumer explosions of the later 20th century” or “travel back to the late 16th century, which had such an emphasis on sharing and goodwill. I love that period's strong links between Christmas and nature.
“I love elements of winter solstice, fighting off the dark and cold and hunger with fire and light and feasting and dancing.”
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Details
The Geffrye Museum, 136 Kingsland Road, London E2. Tel: 0207-739-9893. Admission free.
Kate Colquhoun will be talking about Victorian food as part of the museum's family evening ‘Find Your Festive Spirit', with carols and a Christmas-card making workshop. Thursday December 4, admission free.
Full details at www.geffrye-museum.org.uk
伦敦东区的杰夫瑞博物馆(Geffrye Museum)如一颗隐藏的宝石，是英国中产阶级家庭居室风格变迁的陈列馆。它的永久展馆由11个起居室组成，展示了1600年至今的日常家居装潢，参观者徜徉其间，犹如漫步时间隧道。
英国中产家居博物馆
参观杰夫瑞总有享受盛情款待之感，而圣诞节期间更是参观绝好时机。从周二到明年一月初，杰夫瑞的房间将充满节日气氛，工作人员根据时代的不同，准确复制当时的室内装饰，并展示同时期的圣诞节食品。
展览期间还将围绕维多利亚时代的圣诞庆典，推出节日活动，其中包括贺卡制作工场和有关19世纪圣诞食品的讨论会。
杰夫瑞博物馆的副馆长克莉斯汀•拉鲁米亚(Christine Lalumia)是一位艺术史学家，18年的博物馆工作生涯，令她成为英国圣诞历史沿革的专家。“圣诞庆典几乎可视为一种社会现象，”她说，“某些时代强 调宗教方面的意义；其它的则更世俗化。它对不同的人有着不同的意义。某些观点认为，圣诞食品有着超乎寻常的特殊性，另一些则认为可有可无。”
拉鲁米亚表示，工作人员绝不凭空掺杂个人对圣诞节喜庆和多彩的感受——在英国的大部分历史中，圣诞节是一个有节制的事件，不像后来的都铎时代和斯图 亚特时代那样狂欢，当时的圣诞节到主显节期间，人们沉浸在一场少儿不宜的欢宴中，其中充斥着艳舞和暧昧的游戏。元旦是节日的高潮。食品历史学家凯特•科洪 (Kate Colquhoun)称：“都铎时代庄园的账本显示了在长达12天的圣诞节期间所需的食品……尽管加了大量香料的肉类和水果盘并不仅仅是圣诞大餐，也是整 个冬季的奢侈食品。”
17世纪的圣诞大餐
因此，博物馆的第一个房间，“1630年的大厅”，用常青树装饰（早期基督徒采用这一异教徒的希望与多产符号象征永生）。而餐桌上堆满五颜六色的甜点和美味佳肴，构成了新年的第二道大餐。
这里有晶莹剔透的水果，复制得相当完美，还有核桃，鸡蛋还有熏肉，它们的复制手法惹人喜爱但却不太靠谱。而这些都是刻意所为：“都铎时代，人们钟爱 在食物上玩视觉游戏――他们喜欢把一样东西做得看上去像另一东西，”拉鲁米亚说。实际上核桃、鸡蛋还有熏肉都是现代复制品，它们非常精确地模仿了都铎时代 人们喜爱陈列的假食物，那是用糖浆（当时称为糖盘）制成的。
在1630年，糖非常昂贵，是保留用于特殊场合的一宗大事物。到17世纪末，糖就便宜多了，房间里展示的甜品拼盘和开胃菜才变成我们至今还在享用的“甜品”，其中当然不含开胃的成分。
奥利弗•克伦威尔(Oliver Cromwell)的清教徒政府在1647年通过一项国会法令，明令禁止圣诞节。拉鲁米亚“从来不相信，人们曾经停止在家里庆祝圣诞”。尽管禁令在 1660年取消，但自17世纪末以后，圣诞节就不再流行。在1695年的房间里，仍保留了简单的装饰，还有凤尾鱼和橄榄，与潘趣酒一起用来招待客人。
圣诞是对温暖和快乐的庆祝
而到了1745年，早期乔治时代的前厅仅用花环和一些常青树枝装饰。房间里唯一的亮色是两只高脚玻璃杯中的果冻（一个橙色，一个黄色），与 红酒一道用来招待没有赶上晚餐的客人。到18世纪末，据我们所知已经没有任何圣诞的迹象，尽管晚餐餐桌上还有一道“烤牛肉和梅子布丁”——梅子布丁直到 19世纪中叶才成为一道单独的圣诞菜。直到进入19世纪，牛肉一直是中产阶级圣诞晚餐中常见的主菜。（火鸡自都铎时代出现在英格兰，但圣诞节吃火鸡的习俗直到铁路建成后才形成，便捷的运输使这种大型肉禽进入大家庭成为可能。）
18世纪30年代以后的房间，随着第十二夜蛋糕作为装饰中心，完成了装饰的色彩与量的回归，用拉鲁米亚的话说，从此圣诞成为“绝对完整的基督节日”。
它也成为我们今天仍旧庆祝的圣诞节。家庭圣诞树习俗真正的起源是1848年，在皇室成员围绕圣诞树照相之后。
杰夫瑞博物馆里圣诞房间的魅力令人难以置信，很难挑出哪一个是你的最爱。连专家也很难指出哪个时代拥有最好的圣诞节庆装饰和食品。
12月4日将在博物馆举办讲座的科洪说：“中世纪是另一个高峰——有第十二夜的庆典高潮，有野猪头和焦黄的肉饼，有大厅里轰轰作响的炉火，在一个没有冷库和微波炉，没有电冰箱和加工食品的时代，在没有收成的隆冬，一顿肉食饕餮盛宴的重要性再怎么强调也不会过分”
同时，拉鲁米亚说她希望“流连于爱德华时代，在20世纪末真正的消费爆炸时代之前，人们用发自内心的欢乐来庆祝”，或者“回到16世纪末，那时分享和善意是如此的重要。我喜欢那个时期圣诞节与大自然的紧密联系。”
“我喜欢冬至的元素，用光与火，盛宴与舞蹈对抗黑暗、寒冷与饥饿。”
详细资料
杰夫瑞博物馆，伦敦东2区Kingsland路136号。电话：0207-739-9893。参观免费。
Kate Colquhoun将在博物馆的家庭之夜“发现你的喜庆精神”上讨论维多利亚时代的食物，另有圣诞颂歌和圣诞卡片制作研讨会。
了解完整资料请浏览www.geffrye-museum.org.uk
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