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CHRISTMAS DECORATION 
 
 OF 
 
 CHURCHES 
 

 
 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2016 
 
 https://archive.org/details/essayonchristmasOOcutt 
 
I’lCOJNXlt-riEt'E 
 
AN ESSAY 
 
 ON THE 
 
 CHRISTMAS 
 
 itC0ntti0n 0f 
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 ON THE 
 
 Jctoriitions for (Castor, 
 
 THK SCHOOL FEAST, HARVEST THANKSGIVING, CONFIRMATION 
 AND FOR A MARRIAGE, AND A BAPTISM. 
 
 THE REV. EDWARD L CUTTS, B.A., 
 
 lion. Secretary of the. Essex Archecological Society, 
 
 AUTHOli OF " AN ESSAY ON CHURCH FURNITURE AN1> DECORATION &C., &C. 
 
 ILLUSTRATED. 
 
 SECOND EDITION 
 
 Tlonlioii : 
 
 )OHN CROCKFORl), “CLERICAL JOURNAL” OFFICE. 
 10, WELLINGTON STREET, STRAND. 
 
LONDON; 
 
 I'HINTEI) ItV JOHN CBOCKFORD, 10 , WELLINGTON STBEE'I, 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Cljristmas gaorntrons- 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. Introduction 1 
 
 II. Styles op Decoration * 13 
 
 III. Materials 14 
 
 IV. Pillars 20 
 
 V. Capitals 22 
 
 VI. Arches 23 
 
 Vn. Wall Devices 29 
 
 VIII. Banners 36 
 
 IX. Texts 38 
 
 X. Pulpit and Desk 47 
 
 XI. Font 48 
 
 XII. Standards and Corona 52 
 
 XIII. Screens 53 
 
 XIV. Eeredos 54 
 
 XV. Entrance, &c 57 
 
 XVI. General Plan 59 
 
 XVII. Eoof and Floor 62 
 
 XVIII. Conclusion 63 
 
 I. Easter 66 
 
 II. The School Feast 71 
 
 III. Harvest Thanksgiving 73 
 
 IV. Confirmation 80 
 
 V. Marriage 83 
 
 VI. Baptism 86 
 
ON THE 
 
 L 
 
 (|>5^N old times men took more pains to do honour to the 
 great events of life than we do now. They would strew 
 the street-way with rushes and flowers, and hang 
 tapestries from every window, when any processson of king, or 
 lord, or civic pageant was to pass through their streets. For 
 a wedding or other domestic festival they would adorn the hall 
 with hangings and flags, and scatter flowers among the rushes 
 on the floor and in the broad window seats, and hang garlands 
 on the walls and from the timbers of the roof for bravery and 
 pleasant smell. And just so, on occasions of special ecclesiastical 
 state or festival, they would adorn the Church with tapestries 
 and banners and green boughs and flowers, to give the Church 
 a handsome and festive appearance. The custom had no 
 recondite symbolical meaning ; as Bingham^' says — It was not 
 done at any certain times for any pretended mystery, but only to 
 make them [the Churches] more decent,” and fit for men to 
 meet in for their public worship. 
 
 How old the custom is we cannot say, probably as old as 
 Christianity, because the same loving reverence which paid all, 
 and more than all, the customary honours to the Lord, which 
 anointed His Head with the precious ointment, and wrapped 
 His Body in fine linen, and brought one hundred pounds weight 
 of spices for His embalmment — ’that same spirit would not deprive 
 
 * Christian Antiq. iii. 261 . 
 
 B 
 
2 
 
 CHRISTMAS DECORATION 
 
 the upper rooms where Christians assembled for worship, of the 
 adornments which were customary in rooms of houses and places 
 of public assembly, on occasions of domestic or public ceremonial. 
 
 The earliest notices which we find of the custom are those 
 which Bingham quotes. St. Augustine alludes to one who 
 removed some of the flowers with which the altar of a Church 
 was decorated. Paulinus sings — ‘‘Bring praises to the Lord, 
 ye young men ; perform your pious vows ; strew the pavement 
 with flowers, wreath the threshold with garlands.” And St. 
 Jerome, in his funeral oration upon his friend Nepotian, praises 
 him for his care to have everything becoming and orderly about 
 the Church and its services, and, among other things, that 
 he shaded the Basilicas of the Church, and the Chapels of the 
 martyrs with different kinds of flowers, and branches of trees, 
 and shoots of vine. “ These were but small things in them- 
 selves,” St. Jerome says, “but a pious mind devoted to Christ 
 is intent upon things great and small, and neglects nothing that 
 may deserve the name of the very meanest office in the Church.” 
 And it is plain St. Jerome had a greater value for such sort of 
 natural beauty and comeliness in Churches, than for rich orna- 
 ments of costly pictures and paintings, and silver and gold and 
 precious stones. 
 
 It would naturally be at the great ecclesiastical festivals 
 especially, that the Churches would be thus festally adorned. 
 George Herbert, in the very spirit of Jerome’s eulogy of Nepotian, 
 says of his Country Parson : “ He takes order that the Church 
 be swept and kept clean, without dust or cobwebs, and at great 
 festivals strawed and stuck with boughs, and perfumed with 
 incense.” And, on the other hand, on Fast days the Churches 
 seem to have been significantly strewed with bitter herbs. 
 In the Churchwardens’ accounts of St. Margaret, Westminster,* 
 under the year 1650, is the following item: “Paid for herbs that 
 were strewed in the windows of the Church and about the same, 
 att two severall daies of humiliation, 35. lOd.” And again, under 
 the year 1651, we find : “ Paid for hearbs that were strewed in 
 the Church on the 24th day of May, being a day of humilia- 
 tion, 3s.” 
 
 There are scattered allusions to these floral decorations, and 
 traditional remnants of them, which help us to see when they 
 were done, and to what extent they were carried, and give us, 
 besides, some curious glimpses into ancient manners and customs. 
 Many of our readers, probably, will be glad to have these scat- 
 tered notes brought together here, by way of introduction to the 
 
 * Nichols’s “ Illustrations of the Manners and Expenses of Ancient Times 
 in England.” 
 
OF OHUKCHES. 
 
 O 
 
 more practical part of the subject which we have proposed to 
 ourselves. 
 
 The great Parish Feast day, which was usually on the Saint’s 
 day to whom the Parish Church was dedicated, and was in fact 
 the Dedication Feast, was one of the great occasions on which 
 the Church was thus festally adorned. The English Church 
 kept these Dedication Feasts with greater festivity than the 
 other branches of the Church, for which there is an especial 
 reason. It was customary indeed in many Churches to observe 
 the day of the Consecration among their anniversary festivals, 
 but to this Gregory the Great added a new custom here in 
 England, which was that on the annual Feast of the Dedi- 
 cation the people might build themselves huts of the boughs of 
 trees round about the Church, and there feast and entertain 
 themselves with eating and drinking in lieu of their ancient 
 heathen festivals.”* ‘‘From this custom,” says Bingham, “it is 
 more than probable came our Wakes, which are still observed 
 in some places as the remains of those Feasts of Dedication of 
 particular Churches.” 
 
 On St. Dunstan’s Day, 1494, the Churchwardens of St. 
 Dunstan’s-in-the-East, London, j* paid “ for v. dozen of garlands 
 vh/.,” besides other sums for white and claret wine, and ale and 
 beer and bread. 
 
 In the parish accounts of St. Mary-at-Hill, London, in 1557, 
 we read, “For garlands for our Lady’s Day, j* and for strawenge 
 yerbes, ijs. ijtZ. ;” and probably among the garlands or the yerbes 
 would be the pretty pinky-white Cardamine, with which the 
 meadows are covered at that season ; and which from that cir- 
 cumstance took the name, by which the country people still call 
 it, of (Our) Lady’s Smock. 
 
 Thomas Naogeorgus, translated by Barnabe Googe, in 1570, 
 thus describes it : 
 
 The Dedication of the Church is yerely had in minde, 
 
 ^Yith worship passing Catholicke, and in a wondrous kinde : 
 
 From out the steeple hie is hangde a crosse and banner fayre, 
 
 The pavement of the temple strowde with hearhes of pleasant ayre ; 
 
 The pulpits and the aulters all that in the Church are seene, 
 
 And every pewe and piller great are deckt -with boughs of greeno. 
 
 The rush-bearings, which still continue to be held in West- 
 moreland, and were until quite recently general in Cheshire, 
 seem to be a remnant of the custom of the Dedication Feast. 
 It would seem that on that day the villagers used to take of 
 
 * Bede, bk. i, c, 30 ; Brougham, bk. viii. c. 9. 
 t It was their Dedication F east. 
 
4 
 
 CHRISTMAS DECORATION 
 
 tlieir rush harvest a portion for the use of the Church. In 
 Cheshire, the rush-hearing took place on the day of the wake, 
 and was attended with a procession of young men and women, 
 dressed in ribands, and carrying garlands, &c., which were hung 
 up in the Church. We saw these garlands remaining in several 
 Churches.”'* Hone has put on record an accurate description of 
 the rush-bearing, as he saw it at Grasmere : During the whole 
 
 of this day (July 21) I observed the children busily employed in 
 preparing garlands of such wild flowers as the beautiful valley 
 produces, for the evening procession, which commenced at nine, 
 in the following order : the children (chiefly girls), holding these 
 garlands, paraded through the village, preceded by the Union 
 Band ; they then entered the Church, wdiere the three largest 
 garlands were placed on the altar, and the remaining ones in 
 various other parts of the place. . . . Wordsworth is the 
 
 chief supporter of these rustic ceremonies.”'!' 
 
 But it was not in the country only, for the parish accounts 
 of St. Margaret, Westminster, give, under the year 1544, the 
 item, Paid for rushes against the Dedication Day, which is the 
 first Sunday of October, I 5 . btV’ 
 
 The custom of strewing rushes, or some substitute for rushes, 
 on the Church floor was not peculiar to the Dedication Feast ; 
 it was customary on all high days. It is to be remembered that 
 in those days the floors of houses were not covered with carpets, 
 but a strewing of rushes or hay or straw served instead. This 
 continued to be the case so late as the time of James I. It is 
 related as an illustration of Cardinal Wolsey’s magnificence that 
 he had the strewings of his great hall at Hampton Court renewed 
 every day. We find an allusion to it in the First Part of 
 Shakespeare’s Henry IV., Act iii. s. 1. 
 
 She bids you (says Glendower to Mortimer) 
 
 Upon the wanton rushes lay you down, 
 
 And rest your gentle head upon her lap, 
 
 And she will sing the song that pleaseth you. 
 
 On great occasions sweet herbs and flowers were strewed 
 among the rushes. In Ben Johnson’s Poetaster, Albius, the 
 court jeweller, is going to receive a visit from some courtiers, 
 and he and his wife Chloe are making preparations ; Chloe 
 bids : 
 
 Como bring those perfumes forward a little, and strew some roses and 
 violets here. 
 
 Probably the Church floor was kept always strewed, just as 
 we see that the floors of halls and parlours were, and the strew- 
 
 * Faber’s Sermon “ On the Dignity of Little Children.” 
 
 t Hone’s “ Table Book,” vol. ii. p. 277. 
 
OF CHUECHES. 
 
 5 
 
 ings were renewed on every feast day. We find in Ducange tliese 
 references to the subject — 
 
 On the greater feasts rushes are to be scattered everywhere 
 in Church. the MS. Consuetudinal of St. Augustine s at 
 
 Limousin, f. 14.^ 
 
 ^‘On the feast of St. Augustine the Prior ought to receive 
 rushes, which are required, according to custom, to adorn the 
 Church and chapter house.”— -A MS. of Alont S. Michael, 
 date about 1401, a.d. f 
 
 It is also the business of the Almoner to find rushes on the 
 great festivals for the choir and cloister. 
 
 In the York Visitation Returns, published by the Surtees 
 Society,§ we find some further notices of the custom in our 
 English parish Churches. 
 
 From Akume, Yorkshire, it is stated that the rector, who 
 ought to find straw for the Church twice a year, has omitted it 
 for two years past.|| 
 
 From Salton, in 1472, a.d., it is returned that the parishioners 
 say that the Prebendary is bound to strew the Church with 
 straw twice a year, viz., Christmas and Easter, but has not done it 
 for two years past.®j[ 
 
 Also from Wystow, in the same year, is a similar complaint. 
 They say that the Church ought to be strewed with straw at the 
 expense of the Prebendary, as has been done time out of mind, 
 but now he refuses to do it.* * * § ** 
 
 So, in 1510, there is a complaint from St. Michael le Belfry, 
 in the city of York— Item, thar wher of old custome it hath 
 beyne used that evere yere at the festes of Whitsonday and 
 Saint Peter Day the Kirke was wonnt to be strewed wt ryslies by 
 the Chaumberlane of the mynster, and now it is not soe.” 
 
 The parish of Middleton-Cheney Northants, has to this day a 
 
 * Jiincus majoribus festis sparsus in ecclesia alibi : {Consmtud. MSS. 
 S. Augustini Lemovic, f. 14. 
 
 t In festo S. Augustini praepositus debet recipere juncum, qui debetur 
 ex consuetudine ad parandum chorum et capitulum ; ( Codex MS. Montis 
 S. Michaelis an. circ. 1400.) 
 
 X Eleemosynarius tenetur etiam invenire juncum in magnis festivitatibus 
 in chore et in claustro. 
 
 § York Fabric Rolls, Surtees Society’s Publications, vol. 35. 
 
 II Resta que debet invenire stramina ecclesiae ter in anno, ea subtraxit 
 per brennium : ( York Fabric Rolls, p, 243.) 
 
 ^ Dicunt parostriani quod prebendarius tenetur sternere ecclesiam cum 
 stramine bis annuatim viz. in festis natalis Domini et Paschao ; quod non 
 factum erat per duos annos : fUd. p. 255.) 
 
 ** Dicunt quod en sumptibus prebendarii ecclesia epel strata cum stra- 
 mine, perut per tempus cujus contraii memoria hominum riot existit, nunc 
 recusat : {Ibid. p. 256.) 
 
6 
 
 CHRISTMAS DECORATION 
 
 benefaction to provide hay for strewing the Church in summer, 
 the Eector finding straw in winter. 
 
 Newton, in his Herbal to the Bible, a.d. 1587, speaks of 
 
 Sedge and rushes, with which many in the country do use in 
 summer time to strawe their parlours and Churches, as well for 
 coolness as for pleasant smell.” And again in King Charles the 
 First’s Proclamation, in 1633, relative to Hawful recreations on 
 Sundays, &c.,” it is ordered — That women shall have leave to 
 carry rushes to the Church for the decorating of it according to 
 their old custom.” The plant meant in these old books by the 
 j uncus is not the common rush, but what the old botanists call 
 the Juncus aromaticus, because it emits a faint sweet odour when 
 bruised. The plant is really a flag, and is now called Acoru 
 calamus. Sir W. Hooker, in his British Flora, says : ‘‘ The 
 agreeable scent of this plant has recommended it for garlands, 
 and for strewing on the floor of the Cathedral at Norwich on 
 festal days.” Very likely, however, the common rush was often 
 used when the aromatic one was not easily attainable. 
 
 But besides giving the Church a fresh ‘Htrewing” — that was 
 the technical word — on Feast days, it was also decorated with 
 boughs and flowers ; and just as people first eat boar’s head at 
 Christmas, and goose at Michaelmas, and lamb at Easter, because 
 these viands happened to be the dishes in prime season at those 
 holiday tides, and so in process of time the viands came to be 
 associated with the feast ; so probably, people first used certain 
 flowers at certain festivals because they happened to be in bloom 
 then, and thus in time the flowers came to be associated, as we 
 find them to be, with the festivals. 
 
 Palm Sunday was a great day for floral decorations ; on that 
 day the whole congregation, carrying palm branches and singing 
 a Litany, made a procession round the churchyard to the church- 
 yard cross, and so into the Church and up to the altar, upon 
 which they laid their palms to be blessed,* and the palms were 
 then distributed to them again by the attendant deacons. 
 Various substitutes for the Eastern palm were used ; the most 
 popular of all was the Sallow, not because the sallow was 
 like a palm, for it was most unlike, but because its lithe green 
 boughs, full of yellow catkins, were at that season of the year 
 the things most full of life and blossom : the country people in 
 many parts still know the blooming sallow boughs by no other 
 name than that of palm. Newton, in his Herbal to the Bible 
 before quoted, says : — The common people in some countries 
 
 * There are several notices of churchyard crosses erected for the pro- 
 cession to ho made to on Palm Sunday. An office for blessing the palms 
 on Palm Sunday may bo found in the old service books. 
 
OF CHURCHES. 
 
 7 
 
 used to decke their Church with the boughes and branches of 
 box on the Sunday next before Easter, commonly called Palm 
 Sunday.” It has been suggested that branches of the church- 
 yard yew tree were frequently used as palms. The extracts 
 from churchwardens’ accounts complete the list of Palm Sunday 
 flowers : at St. Martin Outwich, London, there was paid in 
 
 1510-11, for palme, box, floures, and cakes, iiijV/. ; 1525, paid 
 for palme on Palme Sunday, ijc/. ; Ibid, paid for kaks (cakes), 
 flowers, and yow (yew), ijc/.” And the accounts of Allhallows 
 Staining give us similar entries ; ‘‘ For paulme-flowers, cakes, 
 trashes (nails), and thred on Palm Sondaye, viij(7. ; item, for 
 box and palme on Palm Sondaye ; item, for gennepore| for the 
 Church, ijd” Nichols remarks upon these extracts, that it is 
 yet the custom at King’s Cliff, in Northamptonshire, to stick the 
 Church with palms on Passion Sunday.” 
 
 The decoration of the Church for the great festival of Easter 
 continued general long after such honour had ceased to be paid 
 to the ordinary Saint days, except in individual cases. A writer 
 in the Gentlemans Magazine, July, 1783, speaks of ‘‘the flowers 
 with which many Churches are ornamented on Easter Day.” 
 And in many parts of the country the custom has not become 
 obsolete to this day. It is curious, perhaps, that we do not find 
 more early notices of the custom. The churchwardens of 
 St. Dunstan-in-the-East, London, paid at Easter, 1494, “for dis- 
 ciplining rods I and trash (nails) for the sepulchre Is. IrZ.” The 
 accounts of St. Martin Outwich, London, tell us of “j<7. paid^for 
 hrome ageynst Ester,” in 1525 ; but no doubt all the beautiful 
 flowers of the season were used on such a day. The sculpture at 
 the back of the interesting Easter Sepulchre at Hawton Church, 
 Notts (there is a cast of it at the Sydenham Crystal Palace), 
 represents a rose-bush, in full bloom, as growing out of the tomb 
 from which the Lord has risen. The idea was probably taken 
 from the old mediaeval legend, which says that, after the Virgin’s 
 assumption, the Apostles found her tomb full of white and red 
 roses. The Hawton sculpture suggests to us the likelihood that 
 when the effigy of the Lord — which had been taken down from 
 the rood on Good Friday evening and laid in the Easter Sepul- 
 chre — was removed again on Easter Day, the empty tomb was 
 filled with roses. 
 
 The 1st of May, again, was a great day for such customs. 
 
 * Which were used for fastening tapestry, 
 t .Juniper, which was burnt as a perfume. 
 
 j Rods or sticks used for adjusting the tapestiy of the Easter Sepulchre. 
 
8 
 
 CHRISTMAS DECORATION 
 
 rather, perhaps, because it was May Day than because it was the 
 festival of SS. Philip and James, but the feast partook of a 
 religious character. They not only turned the streets into leafy 
 avenues and the porches of their houses into green arbours, and 
 set up a maypole decked with ribands and garlands, and an 
 arbour beside for Maid Marian to sit in and see the dancers ; but 
 the floral decoration extended also into the Church. Polydore 
 Vergil says : At the calends of Male, not only houses and 
 
 gates were garnished with boughs and flowers, but in some places 
 the Churches.” Aubrey, in his "‘Eemains of Grentilisme and 
 Judaisme” (MS. Lands. 266, f. 5), says : On May Day the young 
 
 maids of every parish carry about garlands of flowers, which 
 afterwards they hang up in their Churches.” And Spenser, in 
 his Shepherd’s Calendar,” says: 
 
 Young folks now flocken in every where, 
 
 To gather May buskets f and smelling brere ; 
 
 And home they hasten the postes to dight, 
 
 And all the Kirke pillours ere day light, 
 
 With hawthorn buds and sweete eglantine. 
 
 And girlonds of roses, and soppes in wine.J 
 
 We need not say that the beautiful milk-white hawthorn was 
 especially the flower of the season. At Charlton-on-Otmoor, 
 Oxon, it is an immemorial custom, still observed, to place a gar- 
 land every May Day upon a wooden cross, which remains upon 
 the fine rood-loft of the Church ; it is engraved in the volume of 
 plates to Mr. Parker’s ‘'^Glossary of Architecture.” 
 
 Concerning Whit Sunday, which is still a great feast in rural 
 districts, we find that, at Yatton, in Somersetshire,§ John Lane 
 left half an acre of ground to the poor, reserving a quantity of 
 the grass for strewing the Church on Whit Sunday. The Church 
 of Heybridge, in Essex, is still strev/ed with rushes and maple 
 boughs on Whit Sunday in pursuance of an old bequest. One 
 of the City Churches, we are told, has a sum of money left to it 
 for the purpose of buying roses for Whit Sunday ; and in the 
 accounts of St. Mary-at-Hill, London, we find an entry for gar- 
 lands, Whit Sunday, iijV/.” — rose garlands perhaps, if we may 
 conclude so from Chaucer’s allusion in the Eomaunt of the 
 Eose, where I-jove bids his pupil 
 
 Have hatte of floures fresh as May, 
 
 Chapelett of roses of Whit Sunday, 
 
 For sich array ne costeth but lite. 
 
 * Langley’s Poly. Verg., f. 102. 
 t Boughs. 
 
 j “ Sops in wine” — clove pinks (Dianthus caryophyUus). 
 § Collinson’s Hist. Somerset, vol. iii. 020. 
 
OF CIIUECHES. 
 
 9 
 
 At St. James’s Cliurcli, Mitre Square, Aldgate, there is a very 
 pretty custom on Whit Tuesday, for a knowledge of which we 
 are indebted to the following paragraph, taken from the Standard 
 of May 26, 1860, which is our authority for saying that it is a 
 custom which is still in full observance : — 
 
 The Flowee Sermon. — Our young readers will thank us for 
 mentioning the Whit Tuesday sermon to the young at St. 
 James’s Church, Mitre Square, Aldgate. The young persons 
 attending this service take each of them a bouquet of flowers, and 
 the sermon is always about flowers. The scene is thereby ren- 
 dered peculiarly harmonious. The service will commence at seven 
 o’clock, and the Eector will preach , — City FressC 
 
 Trinity Sunday, again, as one of the great feasts, would call 
 forth special decoration ; but we find only one allusion to it, in 
 the Churchwardens’ accounts of Lambeth,* where we find, in 1519, 
 an entry : For garlands and drynke for the chylderne on Trenyte 
 
 Eve, 6d. and another : For 4 onssys of garnesyng rebonds, o6f.” 
 
 In the notes of the provision made by the Churchwardens of 
 St, Mary-at-Hill, London, for the observance of St, Barnabas’ 
 Day, we find allusions which carry us a little further in our 
 apprehension of the extent to which these floral decorations 
 were adopted. In the years 1 7 and 1 9 Edward IV. we find the 
 entry, ‘‘For rose garlondis and woodrove garlondis on St. Bar- 
 nebe’s Daye, and in the year 1486, “For two dos. di. 
 
 bocse garlands (two dozen and a half of box garlands) for prestes 
 and clerkes on Saynt Barnabe Daye, j6f. xd. and in 1512. 
 “ Rose garlands and lavender, St. Barnabas, js. vj^^/.” It would 
 seem a little incongruous to us, perhaps, to see a grave and 
 reverend clergyman saying prayers with a garland on his head, 
 whether of roses, or of woodruff, or of more sober box ; but we 
 must not judge of these things by our own more prosaic customs. 
 Not only gay Greeks, but stern Romans, used to wear garlands of 
 flowers every day at their feasts ; and in the Middle Ages not 
 only the gay young gentleman in the Romaunt of the Rose had 
 “a hatte of floures fresh as May,” but grave seniors wore chaplets 
 at feasts, and knights wore them round their helmets. We 
 confine ourselves to the instances of Ecclesiastics. Chaucer says of 
 the Sompnour (an officer of the Archdeacon’s court), 
 
 A garland had he set upon his heed 
 As gret as it were for an ale-stake.f 
 
 * Lyson’s “Environs of London,” I. 310 . 
 
 f A stake set up before an ale-house, with a hush at the top of it for a 
 sign. It may still he seen on the Continent. Hence the proverb ; “Hood 
 wine needs no bush.” 
 
10 
 
 CHRISTMAS DECORATION 
 
 Tlie fact that priests and clerks really wore garlands during 
 divine service on liigli days does not depend on this solitary 
 notice. Dr. Eock, in The Church of our Fathers, quotes 
 Polydore Vergil to prove that in England priests performed 
 service on certain high days crowned, and especially at St. Paul’s, 
 London, on the feast of St. Paul. And Stowe mentions the same 
 fact ; he describes the Dean and Chapter, on St. Paul’s Day, 
 ‘‘ apparelled in coaps and vestments, with garlands of roses on 
 their heads, issuing out of the west door.” 
 
 Corpus Christi Day, again, was a great feast of the un- 
 reformed Church ; and when the streets along which the pro- 
 cession was to pass were hung, as they were, with tapestries and 
 strewed with flowers, we may be quite sure that the Church 
 itself, which was the goal of their pilgrimage, exhibited a climax 
 in its decorations. The accounts of St. Mary-at-Hill record, in 
 17 and 19 Edward IV., garlands on Corpus Christi Day, xd. 
 and the accounts of St. Martin Outwich also mention rose 
 garlands on Corpus Christi Day, under the years 1524 and 1525. 
 In Pennant’s time a tradition of the Corpus Christi ceremonies 
 still lingered at Llanasaph, North Wales, in the custom of 
 strewing green herbs and flowers at the doors of houses on that 
 day. 
 
 Midsummer Day was one of the great days of domestic feasting 
 and traditional superstitions ; and that circumstance has brought 
 us more abundant notices (as it then probably brought a more 
 general outward observance) of the Church customs on St. John’s 
 Eve. Birch seems to have been the special tree, as the yellow 
 Hypericum (St. John’s wort) was the special flower of St. John. 
 Stowe tells us that on the Vigil of St. John Baptist every man’s 
 door, being shadowed with green birch, long fennel, St. John’s wort, 
 orpine, white lilies, and such like, garnished upon with garlands 
 of beautiful flowers, had also lamps of glass, with oil burning in 
 them all the night.” And the Churchwardens’ accounts of St. 
 Mary-at-Hill also mention, under 17 and 19 Edward IV., "'for 
 birch at Midsummer, viijtf. and 1486, "birch Midsummer 
 Eve, iiijrZ. and "for birch bowes (boughs) against Mid- 
 summer.” Also the accounts of St. Martin Outwich, in 1524, 
 record, " Payde for byrch and bromes (broom) at Midsonri, ijd;” 
 and in 1525, "Payde for byrch and bromes at Midsom^ iijcZ.” 
 Pennant says they stuck St. .John’s wort over the doors in Wales 
 in his day. In the court of Magdalen, Oxford, a sermon used 
 to be preached on this day from the stone pulpit in the corner, 
 and " the quadrangle was furnished round with a large fence of 
 green boughs, that the preaching might more nearly resemble 
 
OF CHURCHES. 
 
 11 
 
 that of John Baptist in the wilderness ; and a pleasant sight it 
 was.”^' 
 
 But while the old customs which used to be observed on 
 other holy days have become obselete, or linger only here and 
 there as quaint relics of olden times, we still keep up in full 
 use a crowd of old customs at Christmas — ^yule log, and wassail 
 bowl, and boar’s head, and mummers ; and dearer and better 
 customs still, of family meetings, and reconcilement of quarrels, 
 and charities to the poor ; and, among the other customs of the 
 season, we decorate our houses and our Churches with ever- 
 greens to make them gay and handsome for the joyful feast. 
 The custom is still so universally observed that any illustrations 
 of it would be superfluous. 
 
 St. Eoch’s Day (August 16) was formerly celebrated as a 
 general Harvest Home in England. 
 
 Herrick, in the time of Charles I., thus combines a number of 
 these customs: 
 
 Down with rosemary and bays, 
 
 Down with the missletoe, 
 
 Instead of holly now upraise 
 The greener box for show. 
 
 The holly hitherto did sway;. 
 
 Let box now domineer, 
 
 Until the dancing Easter Day 
 Or Easter’s Eve appear. 
 
 Then youthful box, which now hath grace 
 Your houses to renew, 
 
 Grown old, surrender must his place 
 Unto the crisped yew. 
 
 When yew is out, then birch comes in. 
 
 And many flowers beside, 
 
 Both of a fresh and fragrant kin, 
 
 To honour Whitsuntide. 
 
 Green rushes then, and sweetest bents, 
 
 With cooler oaken boughs. 
 
 Come in for comely ornaments 
 To re-adorn the house. 
 
 Thus times do shift ; each thing his turn does hold. 
 New things succeed as former things grow old. 
 
 * liife of Bishop Horne. Works by Jones, XII. 131. 
 t Timbs’s “Things Not Generally Known,” 1st Series, p. 15G. 
 
12 
 
 CHEISTMAS DECORATION 
 
 The custom of adorning our Churches with flowers for great 
 ecclesiastical festivals is so charming, and in itself so innocent, 
 that very likely, with the present taste for reviving such old 
 customs, we shall soon have the floral decoration of our Churches 
 generally revived on other occasions besides Christmas ; at the 
 great festival of Easter, for instance, and at the School Feast, 
 which is so rapidly becoming what our old village feasts used 
 to be ; and at the Confirmation ; and at other similar occasions 
 of general or local religious festivity. Every year now, for 
 example, we see notices in the newspapers of Harvest Homes, in 
 which the first part of the proceedings is to go to God’s House, and 
 give thanks to Him, the Giver of the harvest; and the Churches 
 are described as having been appropriately decorated for the 
 occasion with branches and flowers and corn. At present, how- 
 ever, Christmas is the only time at which the custom is universally 
 observed ; and the practical suggestions which we have at present 
 to make on the subject of the Decoration of Churches will be 
 restricted to that one season. 
 
OF CHURCHES. 
 
 13 
 
 11 . 
 
 Stiilcs of decoration. 
 
 (Igj^.HEEE are two styles of floral decoration, wliicli we 
 may call tlie Naturalistic and the Architectural. The 
 principles of the Naturalistic style are sufficiently simple ; 
 its professors are the Sextons and Pew-openers of England ; they 
 have reduced its practice to very simple elements. First of all, 
 they stick sprigs of holly into the corners of all the pews, and the 
 result is that when the occupants of the corners lean back to 
 
 listen to the First Lesson they find their heads stabbed by the 
 
 strong sharp thorns, and half the decorations are at once plucked 
 out and tossed into the alleys ; their second device is to fasten 
 straggling branches of holly to the candle-brackets of the pulpit 
 and desk ; and their chef d’ oeuvre is to tie a bundle of evergreen 
 round the middle of each pillar, just as a labourer ties a bundle 
 of thorns round a young tree to prevent the cattle from injuring its 
 bark. The highest ideal at which this school can aim is probably 
 that which is pleasantly pictured by a correspondent of the 
 Spectator, who says that, in going into his Church on Christmas 
 
 morning, he found ^‘the central alley converted into a shady 
 
 avenue and each pew into a separate bower.” 
 
 The Architectural school makes the floral decoration relative 
 to the architectural features of the building. No artist, no 
 person of artistic feeling, can, we imagine, hesitate a moment 
 as to which is the true style of decoration. Whenever it is 
 attempted to take the decoration out of the Sexton’s hands and 
 to make it a little more tasteful, the adaptation of the decora- 
 tion to the prineijoal architectural features of the building is 
 almost inevitable. What we advocate in this essay is a deliberate 
 adoption and a careful working out of this principle. The way 
 in which the Gothic architects themselves applied to the permanent 
 decoration of their buildings, foliage and flowers, carved in stone 
 and often painted to imitate the natural flowers and leaves from 
 which they are copied, is an evidence of the practice which they 
 would adopt when I’ecpured to decorate the Church further with 
 living leaves and flowers for a festival ; and a careful study of 
 the way in which they applied their stone floral decoration will 
 
14 
 
 CHRISTMAS DECORATION 
 
 supply US with the principles on which we must apply our more 
 transient decorations. 
 
 Their commonest application of floral ornament was to the 
 capitals of their pillars. They frequently applied it to the 
 hollow mouldings of string-courses and arches ; either filling 
 the hollow with a continuous trail of leaves and flowers, or 
 more commonly putting single flowers (hall-flowers) or bunches 
 of leaves (Tudor ornaments) at intervals in the hollow. They 
 very commonly enriched their hood-mouldings and gables and 
 canopies with foliage crockets and finials. The famous pillar 
 at Eosslyn Chapel shows us the rich and festal effect produced 
 by putting a spiral wreath of foliage round the pier. In rich 
 work we frequently find the wall spaces relieved with diaper- 
 patterns, and with panels of geometrical shapes bearing devices 
 and monograms, which are very capable of imitation in foliage 
 work ; and the texts, which we find carved on scrolls, and under 
 cornices and string-courses, will suggest other methods in which 
 our festal decorations may be appropriately and effectively applied. 
 We will treat of our natural decorations in the order in which 
 their sculptured derivatives have thus occurred to us. 
 
 » ^HEN we come to ask what materials are to be used, we 
 J) find ourselves compelled to deal, at the outset, with the 
 question— -Shall we use Flowers in our decorations? 
 There are a great number of excellent persons who like to see the 
 Church decorated with the customary Christmas greenery, but have 
 a horror of the introduction of flowers ; it is a novelty, and they 
 suspect all novelties. Have a tender respect, dear Decorators, for 
 this suspicion of novelties. In the concrete it often becomes a mere 
 blind unreasoning and unreasonable prejudice ; but in the abstract 
 it is a respectable conservatism, which will not abandon old 
 customs merely because it cannot on demand produce a good 
 reason for them, and will not hastily assent to novelties because 
 
OF CHURCHES. 
 
 15 
 
 they look plausible at first sight. We suppose, as an abstract 
 cpiestion, no good reason can be given why, if you may laudably 
 decorate a Church with leaves and berries, you may not inno- 
 cently use flowers also. But you must not expect people to give 
 good reasons for their likes and dislikes, their prejudices and 
 suspicions. If reasons w^ere as plenty as blackberries, they will 
 not give them on compulsion. The fact remains that, reason or 
 no reason, there are a considerable number of excellent and 
 worthy persons who have no abstract objection to see a few 
 flowers introduced among the decorations ; they even think there 
 would be something poetical and beautiful in putting a great 
 bouquet upon the Communion Table — if there were no super- 
 stitious intention in it ; but, in these da}^s of change, they are afraid 
 of every novelty ; they fear lest too much regard be had to these 
 things, in themselves innocent ; they fear the gradual and 
 insidious return of superstitious practices ; they fear a serpent 
 lying hid among your flowers. Take care, dear Decorators, that 
 you do not give good reason for such fears. But, though we 
 respect these fears, we do not share them. There may be, 
 doubtless there are, men whose tendencies, if unchecked, would 
 carry them astray from the purity and simplicity of the doctrine 
 and practice of the Churcli of England. When the mind of a 
 whole people is deeply stirred we must expect individual eccen- 
 tricities. But though these men and their doings occupy a large 
 share of the public attention, we believe that they are really 
 very few in number. We believe that the great religious move- 
 ment in the midst of which we have the happiness to live is a 
 sound and healthy one ; we honestly believe that the cautious 
 and conservative members of the Church have not really any 
 cause to fear, when they see the young people who are growing 
 up about them taught to hold Church of England doctrines a 
 little more definitely than their fathers and mothers were taught 
 to do in the careless days which are passed ; or caring more about 
 the comeliness of the fabric and furniture of God’s House ; or 
 taking pleasure in decorating it a little more tastefully than old 
 .John Sexton and the rusty-black pew-openers used to do — not 
 even if their taste should lead them to heighten the effect of the 
 sober green with a few harmless flowers as well as coral holly 
 Ijerries, not even if they should put a bouquet of camellias on the 
 Communion Table in honour of Christ’s birthday feast. 
 
 And we beg to say here, too, and so to have done with the 
 subject, that it will be our duty to describe decorations of various 
 degrees of simplicity and of elaborateness ; but that we guard 
 ourselves against its being supposed that we advocate that every- 
 thing which we suggest should be introduced into every Clmrch. 
 We are confident that everything which we arc about to describe 
 
16 
 
 CHRISTMAS DECORATION 
 
 is lawful and innocent ; and there is here no question of high 
 Church or low Church ; we all, high and low, have our Churches 
 decorated for Christmas. The question is not one of theology, 
 but of taste ; shall we decorate in good taste or in bad taste ? 
 We assume that every Clergyman will remember that all things 
 are lawful, but all things are not expedient, and will combine 
 sesthetic zeal with practical discretion. For ourselves, we confess 
 that though we should like very much to please ourselves and 
 the more artist-minded of our people by a judicious introduction 
 of better taste in the Christmas decorations of our Church, yet 
 we would rather let John Sexton scratch the heads of the con- 
 gregation, and put his ridiculous bundles of thorns round the 
 fair pillars of the Church, for a few years longer, than excite 
 vague and unfounded suspicions, and mar the infinitely higher 
 joy and union of the Christmas feast, by making the Church 
 decorations a cause of strife and division. 
 
 But though we may use flowers here and there to heighten the 
 effect of our decorations generally, or to give especial honour to 
 some particular parts of the Church, it is on the evergreens that 
 we depend for the groundwork of all our decoration. 
 
 In cutting the evergreens, remember that it is not necessary to 
 cut off great branches : you need only small twigs, and if branches 
 are sent you will have to strip the twigs from them. Let your 
 friends know this, and they will be the less reluctant to thin out 
 their shrubberies to supply you with material. Every kind of 
 evergreen is useful for your purpose, and every kind may be used, 
 with one exception, so remarkable that it is worth special note. 
 You may use every other kind of evergreen, but in decorating a 
 Church you must not use missletoe. We all use missletoe in the 
 decoration of our houses ; we should not think our Christmas 
 complete if there did not hang in hall or dining-room a bunch of 
 its curious forked branches, with their terminal pairs of nerveless 
 pale-green leaves, and a white crystalline berry dropped within 
 each pair ; but not a sprig of it must be put into the Church ; 
 every sexton in the kingdom will tell you so ; he does not know 
 why, but it never is, and never ought to be. The universal use 
 of it in our houses and the universal absence of it in our Churches 
 are both curious examples of the vitality of traditional customs. 
 We all put it into our houses — not as an excuse for saluting our 
 fair cousins, holly berries would be excuse enough for that — if 
 one needed any excuse at all — but we do it simply because our 
 fathers always did it, and they because their fathers did it ; and 
 so the custom has descended from generation to generation, ever 
 since the time when our forefathers were disciples of the Druids 
 and used the mystic symbol in their mid-winter festivities. But 
 the Cliristian missionaries, while adojiting all that was innocent 
 
OF CHURCHES. 
 
 17 
 
 in the popular observances, banished the superstitious symbol of 
 a false creed from the Christmas decorations of God’s House ; 
 and that tradition of its ecclesiastical disuse has descended from 
 sacristan to sacristan side by side with the tradition of its social 
 use. 
 
 Holly should, perhaps, be the staple of your decorations. It is 
 specially appropriate, by custom and association, to Christmas, as 
 the blooming sallow is to Palm Sunday, or milk-white hawthorn 
 to May-day. Moreover, it is the most pictorially effective of all 
 the evergreens : — Look at the dark glossy green of its leaves ; see 
 how they are bent into a variety of planes so as to produce a 
 wonderful play of light and shade from their surface ; how the 
 cusped outline and the unyielding texture of the leaves assimilate 
 with the architectural forms to which they are to be applied ; 
 how piquant the thorny points, and how the green sprig is 
 illuminated by its bunch of coral-red berries. By-the-bye, notice 
 that the twigs which are most fruitful in berries have usually the 
 smoothest, tamest, least picturesque leaves. Get an ample sup- 
 ply of both, cut off the tame leaves from the berry-bearing 
 twigs, leaving only the mass of berries on the stalk, and work in 
 these bunches of berries among the leafy twigs. Get as much 
 variegated holly as possible, every single leaf of it will be found 
 valuable in giving lightness and relief to the darker green, 
 which is the pervading tint of evergreens. Laurel is not so 
 valuable, its leaves are large, flat, and tame, and its sprigs do not 
 form into nice sprays. Portugal laurel is valuable for its colour ; 
 take in preference the twigs which bear the smaller leaves. 
 Laurestinus is valuable both for its sprays and for the relief which 
 its flowers afford, but it soon fades. Select your ivy with care. 
 The ordinary large leaves are not very useful ; the terminal 
 sprays of smaller leaves with bunches of black berries are 
 useful ; and the small variety which grows on trees and old walls 
 and hedge-banks, and has small deeply-cut leaves of glossy green 
 with a beautiful net-work of light-coloured veins, is specially 
 valuable. The smaller-leaved evergreens, such as yew, myrtle, 
 and box, are specially useful for the smaller devices which require 
 finer work. Little bunches of the common golden everlasting 
 flowers will be found as valuable as the bunches of red holly 
 berries in giving colour and relief to the masses of green. Chry- 
 santhemum flowers may be used for the same purpose. For those 
 parts of the decoration where extra ornamentation is appropriate, 
 as in the font and about the altar, Christmas roses may be 
 introduced, and camellias ; and a considerable variety of ever- 
 lasting flowers, of beautiful shape and colour, which have been 
 introduced into our greenhouses of late }^ears, will be found very 
 useful. 
 
 D 
 
18 
 
 CHRISTMAS DECORATION 
 
 Having formed your general plan, and collected your ever- 
 greens and flowers from all tlie gardens and greenhouses to which 
 you can obtain access, the next thing to be done is to learn how 
 to manufacture the long trails of green, whose straight and 
 curved lines compose the great mass of the decorations. 
 
 We have seen them made of ivy leaves sewn upon a band of 
 green calico, but the effect is not good ; and we desire at the 
 outset to warn tyros against the fabrication of any decorations — 
 wreaths, or devices, or texts — in this manner. Near at hand, 
 and in a good light, where the varied outline of the leaves and 
 the play of light and shade are distinctly visible, the effect is 
 pleasing enough ; but at a distance, and in such a light as is 
 usual in the interior of a Church in winter time, the effect is 
 simply that of a flat band of green ; the green calico, without 
 the foliage upon it, would look very nearly as well. 
 
 The most beautiful wreaths are formed of a rope or band of 
 evergreen sprigs. There are some varieties in the way in which 
 such a wreath may be made ; one way is as follows : — Get a rope 
 of proper length, and a quantity of twine, and a handful of ever- 
 green twigs ; begin at one end of the rope ; dispose a bunch of 
 the twigs round the rope, and tie them on with the twine ; then 
 dispose another bunch so that their leaves may conceal the 
 stalks of those already on, and give the twine a turn round 
 them ; and so on until the whole rope is finished. The twine 
 need not be tied at the fastening of each bunch of twigs, but 
 passed round and round the cord ; but the work will be more 
 secure if the twine is looped at each fastening, and not merely 
 passed round, A considerable difference in the appearance of 
 the wreath, and in the material and time occupied in its fabrica- 
 tion, is made by the density or sparseness with which the twigs 
 are disposed. We have seen them with the twigs so small and 
 so thickly placed, that the result was a thick rough rope, which 
 reminded one of the sallies” with which Church bell-ropes are 
 provided ; and, on the other hand, we have seen the twigs so 
 large, and so thinly put on, that the effect was meagre, and 
 spoke of haste, or indolence, or want of taste. Another way of 
 fabricating wreaths, which we ourselves prefer, is as follows : — 
 Instead of a rope foundation to fasten the twigs upon, use only a 
 piece of stout twine to run through the wreath, so as to prevent 
 its falling to pieces ; and instead of twine to tie the twigs on, 
 use fine wire — iron will do, brass is better. Instead of making 
 the wreath round, make it flat ; thus : — take a bunch of twigs, 
 keeping the stalks tolerably long, and fasten them together with 
 wire ; add a few more twigs, fastening them with a cast or two 
 of the wire to the stalks of those already on ; and so work down- 
 wards ; always arranging the twigs so as to show well to the 
 
OF CHURCHES. 
 
 19 
 
 front, and always keeping the twine running through the wreath. 
 The wreath is in this manner much more easily made, and so far 
 as our experience extends, is more effective than the rope wreaths. 
 In all kinds of wreaths the thickness and density of the wreath 
 must be carefully regulated at the outset, according to the 
 requirements of the Church and the taste of the decorator, and 
 then evenly maintained throughout. For a short massive pillar, 
 a tolerably thick wreath is desirable ; for a pillar of lighter 
 proportions, it may be of lighter texture. Care must be taken 
 that all the foliage is turned in one direction, especially where 
 two persons are working at the same rope ; for it is not an 
 uncommon blunder with novices for two to begin zealously at 
 opposite ends of the same wreath, and to find, when they meet 
 in the middle, that they have not only made their respective 
 halves of different thicknesses, but also turning opposite ways. 
 It is better for the most experienced person among the decorators 
 to make a small wreath for a pattern, and for the rest to work 
 according to it, each wreath being made by one person. The 
 wreaths may be made of one kind of evergreen only, or of any 
 number of kinds mixed ; the latter has the better effect. There 
 should be a due admixture of the fine kinds, as yew, arbor vita3, 
 box, &c., to keep the wreath light and sprayey. The bunches of 
 berries or flowers, or variegated holly sprigs, which are as 
 valuable as flowers, may be stuck in afterwards when the green 
 line is finished, or even when the wreath is fixed in its place. 
 On a foundation of lath or iron-rod the sprigs are fastened in the 
 same way, but with greater ease and rapidity. 
 
 Having taught in a general way how to manufacture these 
 straight and curved lines of evergreen, we proceed in the next 
 place to suggest the various ways in which they may be applied 
 to the decoration of the Church. These lines of green may be 
 applied with very beautiful effect, so as to bring out the chief 
 architectural lines of the building, to the pillars and arches 
 which separate the nave and chancel from their aisles, and the 
 nave from the chancel ; to the arches of the windows and doors ; 
 and to the horizontal wall plates and string courses of the walls. 
 In this application of our foliage and floral decorations we shall 
 be following the method of the architects, who in rich and 
 elaborate work used to emphasize these lines by this very method 
 of introducing sculptured foliage and flowers into them. We 
 have thus the satisfaction of knowing that we are decorating our 
 Church on the most correct artistic principles, and in the very 
 way which the architect of the building would himself have 
 approved. 
 
20 
 
 CHRISTMAS DECORATION 
 
 IV. 
 
 Jillars. 
 
 ^fHEN the Church has rows of pillars and arches between 
 the nave and its aisles, they afford an opportunity for 
 introducing what is always the most pleasing portion of 
 
 
 
 / s 
 
 / N 
 
 / 
 
 
 / 
 
 NO. II. DECORATIONS OF PILLARS AND ARCHES AND WALL DEVICES. 
 
OF CHUECHES. 
 
 21 
 
 the decorations. Let the capitals have a chaplet of green and 
 flowers round them, and the pillars be adorned with a spiral 
 wreath. The accompanying woodcut will show at a glance the 
 principle on which this is to be done. To begin with the 
 Pillars. The flexible cords of green, whose fabrication we 
 have described, are to be turned round the shafts of the pillars 
 in the way exhibited in the cut. The ends are to be fastened to 
 a string tied firmly round the pillar, under the neck moulding 
 of the capital, and above the upper moulding of the base. 
 These will afford the necessary points of suspension and tension, 
 without driving in nails. They who remember the beautiful 
 wreathed pillar in Eosslyn Chapel will see that this is only to 
 imitate in actual foliage the beautiful effect which the Portuguese 
 architect has there produced in sculptured stone. It is desirable 
 to measure carefully the length of the rope or twine which will 
 be required for each pillar before beginning to make the wreath 
 upon it. 
 
 There are a few practical hints to be given as to the applica- 
 tion of the spiral wreath to a pillar. Take care that the wreath 
 is not put upside down ; foliage must never be put in a direction 
 contrary to that of its growth. Do not let the spiral line be too 
 horizontal ; an angle of 45 degrees with the horizon is the best. 
 But when the line is coiled at this angle it will often go so few 
 times round the pillar that the effect is poor. To remedy this 
 let there be two spirals fastened at top on opposite sides of the 
 pillar, and carried down parallel with each other. This is the 
 way in which the wreathed pillars in the wood-cut are arranged, 
 and the effect is admirable. To a short massive pillar, such as 
 we find in Norman arcades, it may be necessary to apply three 
 or more wreaths in order to get the desired richness of decora- 
 tion. 
 
 Care must be bestowed too upon the direction of the spiral 
 line, and the more care because it is curious that some persons 
 seem to be unconscious when the spiral lines of neighbouring 
 pillars do not agree. All the pillars on the same side, at least, 
 should have the spiral line running in the same direction. Some 
 artistic decorators maintain the same direction of the spiral 
 throughout the Church ; others make the wreaths spire 
 differently on the different sides of the Church, turning both 
 so that to a spectator at the west end of the nave they coil 
 towards, and so lead the eye up to, the altar. The responds 
 (half pillars at each end of an arcade) should be treated as 
 half pillars ; short lengths of wreath should be coiled round 
 them, to make them match the rest of the piers of the arcade. 
 
 Some decorators do not wreathe all the pillars, but treat the 
 alternate pillars with vertical lines of wreath carried from capital 
 
22 
 
 OHEISTMAS DECOEATION 
 
 to base, as shown in the nortli-east pillar in our Frontispiece. 
 This may especially be done where the pillars are alternately 
 round and octagonal, or where the shafts are clustered, though 
 it may as easily be done where all the pillars are plain round. 
 In a clustered pillar, the wreaths will be placed in the hollows ; 
 where it is octagonal, on the centre of the faces, either on all the 
 faces or only on four of them, viz., the diagonal faces ; and on 
 a round pillar, in corresponding positions. When it is desired 
 to economise material and labour, it may suffice to put only the 
 two vertical wreaths which are visible from the nave. These 
 vertical wreaths may be made with great facility by tying the 
 evergreens upon splines, after the method to be presently 
 described. A variety may be made in the treatment of a 
 clustered pillar by using continuous trails of ivy with bunches 
 of its black berries fastened at intervals ; or by using single 
 detached sprigs of holly with its red berries placed at inter- 
 vals ; either of these decorations may be fastened to a light 
 lath, or osier rod, or wire, and so applied to the hollow 
 moulding. 
 
 A very piquant effect may be produced by throwing off sprays 
 of foliage at intervals from the spiral wreath, in the manner 
 indicated in the middle pillar of the south side of our Frontis- 
 piece ; or, for a variety, two wreaths may be crossed in the 
 manner shown in the south-east pillar of the Frontispiece. 
 
 v. 
 
 Capitals of the piers ought to be decorated with a 
 chaplet. This chaplet must be applied to the capital 
 round its bell, ^. e. the swelling portion of the capital 
 between the neck and the upper mouldings. A length of the 
 wreath which we have recommended for the pillars will make a 
 very effective chaplet for the capital ; it should, perhaps, be 
 made a little more light and sprayey, and a little appropriate 
 richness of decoration may be given to it by applying to it larger 
 and more frequent bunches of holly berries. Or, a piece of 
 
OF CHURCHES. 
 
 23 
 
 twine may be fastened round the bell, and sprigs of evergreens 
 stuck in it. It will facilitate the making of the chaplet thus if 
 one person holds the two ends of the twine, so as to give it a little 
 play, and yet keep it tight, while another adjusts the sprigs ; 
 then tie it when all is arranged. There is abundant room for 
 ingenuity and taste in the fabrication of a chaplet in this 
 manner. Ivy leaves may be disposed regularly upon the bell, 
 springing out of the neck, their regular and piquant forms telling 
 admirably against the white stone ; or quatrefoils of holly 
 leaves, with berries in the centre of each quatrefoil, may be thus 
 arranged on the bell of the capital, or foliage may be arranged 
 upon the bell in imitation of the way in which the old sculptors 
 arrange their stone foliage on sculptured capitals. Or, if more 
 elaborate and artificial decorations are used elsewhere, a more 
 elaborate chaplet of leaves and flowers may appropriately be 
 introduced here. 
 
 Illustrations of some of the methods thus described, and in- 
 dications of other varieties, will be found in our Frontispiece, and 
 in the woodcut of an arch given on page 20. 
 
 The pews will very much interfere with the decoration of the 
 lower part of the piers. Where there are open benches, so that 
 the Bases are partially seen, they may have a wreath round them 
 just below the neck. Some decorators lay a large loose wreath 
 round the bottom of the base, and continue the lower end of the 
 shaft wreath so as to lose itself in this base wreath ; but we 
 prefer the severer style above described. 
 
 Yl. 
 
 (Ipyf^IIEBE are three ways of decorating arches : to put a trail 
 green over the hood-moulding, or in a hollow of the 
 arch-mouldings, or under the soffit of the arch. 
 
 These trails should be made upon osier wands, or upon roofing 
 laths ; they are not only more easily made so, and more easily put 
 up in their places, but they have this great advantage, that they 
 may l:>e put up either entirely without nails, or with a very small 
 
24 
 
 CHRISTMAS DECORATION 
 
 number of nails. A lath of proper length may be forced into a 
 hollow moulding, or under the soffit of an arch, and will keep its 
 place without any nails at all ; in any case of difficulty, where 
 the lath will not stay in its place, a little wedge of wood will 
 make it fit more tightly, or a block of wood jammed tightly 
 across a moulding will afford a firm point to fasten to, without 
 injury to the stone work. If osier rods, or wreaths made on rope 
 or twine, be laid over the hood-moulding, they will perhaps 
 require one nail at the apex of the arch and one on each side at 
 the spring of the arch ; and let the nails be driven firmly in at 
 first, and be touched over with paint of the same colour as the 
 wall, that they may be as little visible as possible ; and let them 
 remain permanently, for the decorations to be tied to year after 
 year. 
 
 In all these modes of applying decoration to arches the fol- 
 lowing methods of making the decorations may be adopted. 
 First, sprigs of evergreen may be tied continuously on the rod 
 or lath, after the fashion of the wreaths already described ; 
 a trail over the hood-moulding may be of ivy only ; if the 
 decorator please, he may put little sprigs of the foliage here and 
 there to imitate crocheting, and a nicely-disposed bunch at the 
 apex by way of finial will make a good finish, and at the same 
 time conceal the junction of the two rods. These crockets and 
 finials may be made by putting separate leaves on wire stalks and 
 tying the wires together. Secondly, quatrefoils of holly leaves, 
 or other similar devices of foliage, may be stitched together and 
 then tacked to the lath with a nail at proper intervals, in 
 imitation of the ball flowers and Tudor leaves with which the 
 architects enrich their mouldings ; or different kinds and tints 
 of foliage may be used in short lengths ; or the alternate lengths 
 may be left without foliage, and the lath wrapped spirally 
 with a band of red — common red bordering, such as is used for 
 window-curtains, will do — giving something the effect of tooth- 
 moulding. It must be borne in mind that when the decorations 
 are to be applied to the soffit of the arch they must be made on 
 the face of the lath ; when they are to be applied in a hollow 
 moulding of the arch, or over the hood-moulding, they must be 
 made on the side of the lath. In putting up the arch decora- 
 tions care must be taken to make the foliage turn the right way, 
 i. e. pointing upwards on both sides of the arch ; and it is to be 
 noted as a general rule that foliage is never to be put in a 
 position contrary to that of its growth. 
 
 In large Churches it is a very difficult operation to put de- 
 corations round the arches, and involves the use of long ladders 
 and of men accustomed to the dangerous work of climbing and 
 working upon them. But in small Churches it is not very diffi- 
 
OF CHURCHES. 
 
 25 
 
 cult : fix your ladder to tlie middle of one side of the arch ; take 
 up the rod or lath by the middle, and mount, carrying it under 
 the ladder ; first fit the up|)er end into its place, and then with a 
 thrust the lath will bend to the arch, the lower end will slip 
 into its place on the capital, and it is done. If the rod is to go 
 over the hood-moulding, first fit the small end of the rod well 
 under the nail at the apex, bend it over the hood, and slip the 
 lower end under the nail at the spring of the arch ; it may, per- 
 haps, require a tie with a piece of twine at each end to prevent 
 it from slipping. 
 
 The Chancel Arch should be more highly decorated than any 
 other. Perhaps the best effect will be produced by a straight 
 line of green applied to the front of the half-pillars on each side, 
 and under the soffit of the arch. The whole opening of the 
 chancel arch will thus be fringed with foliage. Then another 
 line of green may be placed over the hood of the arch, and con- 
 tinued down the side of the half-pillar ; or, still better, a gable 
 or pediment of green lines may be placed over the chancel arch, 
 after the fashion suggested in the cuts on pp. 26 and 68. The 
 capitals, too, of the chancel arch should be more highly deco- 
 rated than those of the nave. 
 
 Chancels usually have no aisles, and in small Churches the nave 
 frequently has none. A very effective way of treating an aisle- 
 less chancel or nave is to make pillars and arches of evergreen 
 against the wall, of about the same size that the arcade of an 
 aisle would be, so that the windows shall (if they are regularly 
 placed) come into the middle of the arches. Put a good bunch 
 of green to represent the capital of the pillar, and give it force 
 by decorating it with berries or flowers. Or a very nice effect 
 may be produced by putting arches of green round the margin of 
 the window-splays, and continuing the line of green down to a 
 string course of green running horizontally under the windows. 
 The effect will be still richer if similar arches are formed upon 
 the blank-wall spaces between the windows, so as to make a con- 
 tinuous arcade. If the wall-spaces are wide in proportion to the 
 width across the window-splay, it may be necessary to divide the 
 wall-space into two arches ; or into one of the same size as the 
 window arch, with a narrower and lower arch on each side. The 
 blank arches may be filled in with some of the w^all devices 
 which we shall presently speak of. Where mock pillars and 
 arches have been formed against the wall, if the windows fall 
 regularly in the middle of the arches, a very rich effect may be 
 produced by edging the margin of the window-splays also with 
 lines of green. In this case the pillars and arches may be formed 
 of broad full lines of mixed evergreen, and the window arches of 
 a narrower line of yew. The lighter and fuller arches and pillars 
 
 E 
 
^Of> IN THL K^CMESTa^<>>^l^■■•E.AKTH »:-PE:aO E WtLt::T<>\v-RRI>^iL^ M E 'ft 
 
 26 
 
 CHRISTMAS DECORATION 
 
 NO. III. WALL ARCADE AND DOORWAY. 
 
OF CHURCHES. 
 
 27 
 
 will stand off from the wall, while the flatter, smaller, darker 
 decoration of the window margins will make them recede, and 
 thus a kind of perspective will be produced which will very much 
 add to the effect of the Church. The arches of which we have 
 spoken are best formed on a frame-work of bent iron rod ; hazel 
 or osier w^ands do not bend into true curves. The rod may be 
 suspended by a nail from the apex. The openings of the doors 
 should be treated in the same way as the windows. If there is a 
 string course it may be emphasized by a line of green ; if there 
 is not an architectural string course, one of green may be made. 
 A line of green may also be put under the wall plate by way of 
 foliaged cornice. The straight-sided arches are much the most 
 easily made, and are very effective. They may be used, indeed, 
 with excellent effect over architectural arches wherever they 
 occur — in arcades, windows, or doors — instead of, or in addition 
 to, the line of green, following the curve of the arch. The gable 
 over the arch, Mr. Ruskin tells us, is the very element of Gothic 
 art ; at least, it is a very beautiful combination. On the opposite 
 page we give a woodcut (No. 3) of an arcade of straight-sided 
 arches, in order to make more intelligible a very useful arrange- 
 ment, and to give some idea of its general effect. The manu- 
 facture of the framework is very simple. The straight lines are 
 composed of slating laths, which may be fastened together with 
 a single screw at each joint, so that the joint will turn on a 
 rude hinge. This Avill make it easier to carry the decoration 
 about, and will enable it to be set up in its place with the 
 smallest possible number of fastenings to the wall. This frame- 
 work of laths is to be covered with evergreen in the manner 
 described in our former paper. The wall spaces between the 
 arches may be left plain, or may be filled in, as represented 
 in the woodcut, or with any of the wall devices described at 
 pp. 30 — 34. A banner, of which we shall presently give some 
 models, may be hung from the bases of the straight-sided 
 arches, the foot of the staff being lodged in the angle, and the 
 banner supported at a proper inclination by means of a cord 
 carried up to a nail or tenterhook in the wall or in the wall-plate. 
 
 We give another illustration on the next page (No. 4) of a 
 Perpendicular aisle, treated still more simply than in the last 
 instance ; it is a design which was carried out in the decorations 
 of St. Matthias’s Stoke Newington, last Easter. The design is 
 nothing more than a zig-zag of green lines, which have the effect 
 of a kind of simple canopy over the windows. The wall spaces 
 might be decorated with any of the wall devices already or 
 hereafter given : we have, however, filled them in with banners, to 
 show how these very valuable decorations, upon which we are 
 going to enlarge presently, may be introduced in such situations. 
 
NO. lY. ^VALL DECORATION. 
 
CHRISTMAS DECORATION OF CHURCHES. ' 2 \) 
 
 In the western bay of the illustration (No. 3) we have indi- 
 cated the manner in which a doorway may be treated. The 
 reader may judge of the very pleasing effect which may be thus 
 produced by covering the rest of the woodcut with his hand or 
 with a slip of paper. Over the doorway, it will be seen, is a text, 
 with a border of evergreen, which follows the line of the arch. 
 
 VII. 
 
 decorated our arcades, or made arcades where 
 they do not exist, our attention will be next attracted 
 to the plain bare spaces of wall, the spandrels between 
 the arches, and the wall spaces between the aisle windows. 
 These may be enriched with devices made of evergreens, or 
 with texts on panels and scrolls and ribands, or with both. 
 We shall consider first the wall devices. Our difficulty here 
 is that one who is accustomed to such work can sit down and 
 sketch off a hundred different devices in half as many minutes, 
 which it would be very long and tedious to describe, and very 
 costly to engrave. All that we can do then is by pen and penciP 
 to suggest a few leading types, and to leave it to the ingenuity 
 of each decorator to vary and multiply them for himself. 
 
 The most usual wall devices are of geometrical shape, made 
 of hoops or wire or laths, covered with sprigs of evergreen tied 
 or nailed on their face, and enriched with holly berries and 
 flowers. A hoop from the nearest basket-maker’s will furnish 
 a foundation for a Circle, which you may form of sprigs of yew, 
 arbor vitse, box, holly, &c., tied on the hoop, or of a double row 
 of laurels fastened on regularly, after the fashion of a conqueror’s 
 wreath. If you make a laurel wreath of it, you may tie it at the 
 lower side with a bunch of red or blue riband ; you may place within 
 it an A, and in a corresponding circle an n ; the letters may be 
 
 * For tlie majority of the drawings which illustrate this work, and for 
 many valuahle suggestions, wo are indebted to the kindness of .James 
 Brooks, Esq., Architect, 5, Bloomsbury-squarc, who was, perliaps, the first 
 to introduce what we have called the architectural style of lloral decoration, 
 and who has had great experience in its practice. 
 
30 
 
 CHRISTMAS DECORATION 
 
 made of card, and covered over with laurel leaves, or green sprigs, 
 or holly berries, or yellow everlastings, and fastened in the middle 
 of the circle to two invisible cross wires ; or you may stretch a 
 piece of white paper or white calico across the circle, and put the 
 letters on this ground either with paint or coloured cloth. 
 
 A piece of iron wire may be bent into a Trefoil, or Qiiatrefoil, 
 or Multifoil, or laths may be tied into a Triangle, to be covered 
 with green sprigs tied on ; and a pretty finish may be given to 
 such devices by placing in the middle a trefoil or quatrefoil 
 formed of large single holly leaves or ivy leaves, with a bunch of 
 berries or everlastings for a centre. A quatrefoil forms a good 
 border for any cruciform device. Within a multifoil may be 
 
 placed a star of single laurel 
 leaves, with a bunch of holly 
 berries or everlastings fora centre. 
 
 In the device of which we 
 here give a woodcut, the circle 
 and triangle are combined. The 
 circle is covered with holly sprigs, 
 the triangle with arbor vitse or 
 box sprigs ; the points of the 
 triangle are ornamented with 
 bunches of everlastings, the cen- 
 tral points of the sides of the 
 triangle with bunches of holly 
 berries. 
 
 The next illustration is a combination of a triangle and a 
 
 trefoil ; the triangle covered 
 with arbor vitae or box, the 
 foils with holly ; the bunches 
 are all of everlastings ; the 
 bunches on the sides of the 
 triangles might be of holly 
 berries. 
 
 A very favourite device is 
 a Double Triangle, which is 
 capable of considerable variety 
 of treatment. Both triangles 
 may be covered uniformly with 
 mixed greens tied on, or one 
 triangle may be covered with 
 holly and the other with yew. 
 The effect may be heightened by putting a row of berries or ever- 
 lastings along the middle, or a double row along the sides of the 
 triangles ; or the illumination may be confined to the six rays 
 which are formed by the projecting points of the triangles ; or 
 
 NO. V. WALL ORNAMENT. 
 
OF CHUECIIES. 
 
 31 
 
 bundles of berries or of everlastings, or of both alternately, may 
 be placed at intervals ; or the triangles may be bound together 
 with strings of berries, or a zig-zag line of strung berries may 
 be carried along all the sides of the triangles. Where different 
 evergreens are used for the two triangles, the holly may be 
 illuminated with its own berries, and the yew with everlastings. 
 
 The woodcut represents a 
 very simple but effective variety 
 of this type. It is made of tw'O 
 triangles of thin laths fastened 
 one behind another; one tri- 
 angle is covered with arbor 
 vitse, the other with holly, and 
 they interlace. The laths do not 
 actually interlace, but the effect 
 of interlacing is very simply 
 effected by making a gap at the 
 intersection of the laths in the 
 holly decorations and carrying 
 the arbor vitae through, and 
 vice versa. The points are 
 finished with triplets of ivy 
 
 leaves carried on hre stalks. vir. -w.^LL ornament. 
 
 The central hexagonal space, which is formed by the inter- 
 secting lines of the two triangles, presents an opportunity for 
 additional ingenuity. It may be crossed with wire covered with 
 light sprigs of arbor vitse or box : a star of laurel leaves, with an 
 eye of berries or everlastings, may be placed in the centre ; or 
 a camellia flow’er in a star of its own leaves ; or a wreath of 
 everlastings may be suspended in the centre ; or, if flowers are 
 used in the decorations, and the device is to be placed in an 
 important position — on the front of the cover of the Commu- 
 nion Table, or on the Font, or Pulpit — you may cover the 
 triangles with laurel or camellia leaves, and put a flower at 
 each point and at each intersection ; and, further, in the hexagon 
 you may fasten with invisible wires a light garland of camellias 
 alternately red and white, formed on a circle of wire. 
 
 The one of which we give a representation on the next page is of 
 much more simple fashion. One triangle is of arbor vitae or box, 
 the other of holly, interlacing. In the central ornament the radii 
 are of arbor vitae, the central boss is of mixed immortelles and 
 holly berries, and the bunches on the sides of the hexagon are 
 alternately of immortelles and holly berries ; the points of each 
 triangle are finished with sprigs of the same evergreen with 
 which it is covered. 
 
 There is no limit to the variety of Crucifrriti Devices which 
 
32 
 
 CHRISTMAS DECORATION 
 
 may be formed with a few bits of lath and wire. Two are 
 
 NO. VIII. WALL ORNAMENT. 
 
 indicated in the cut of the Arch 
 on p. 20. The device, of which 
 we give a woodcut below, is an 
 example of the more elaborate 
 cruciform devices ; it is taken 
 with some alterations, from one 
 which was used at the west end 
 of St. Matthew’s Church, City- 
 road, London, some years ago. The 
 large cross and circle are of wood 
 covered with arbor vitse, and 
 heightened in effect by bunches 
 of holly berries fastened on, and 
 ivy leaves, carefully selected, and 
 fastened merely by having their 
 stalks stuck in under the arbor 
 vitae sprigs. The field of the 
 
OF CHUROHER. 
 
 33 
 
 circle is of red and white cambric, or silk, or velvet. The central 
 ornament has its outline formed of immortelles, and its blank 
 spaces filled in with red and white cambric, silk, or velvet, as 
 indicated in the drawing, where the vertical shading represents 
 the red. Beautiful foliated terminations may be made to these 
 cruciform devices, of laurel, ivy, or holly leaves mounted on stalks 
 of wire. The intersections of the lines may be enriched with single 
 leaves feathered off with light sprigs of arbor vitae, or cedar, 
 or yew. 
 
 The next example (No. 10) is thus constructed. The outer 
 circle is a hoop covered with evergreen, and ornamented with 
 
 NO. X. WALL ORNAMENT. 
 
 bimches of red and yellow everlasting flowers. At the back of 
 the hoop is strained a circle of white glazed calico, which forms 
 the ground of the cruciform device. The cross is left white, and 
 jewelled with little circles of red cloth pasted upon the ground. 
 The margin of the cross is green cloth pasted upon the ground. 
 The extremities of the cross represent four crowns, and may, 
 if it is desired, be made still more like crowns in their outline. 
 They are of red cloth, with little circles cut out to show the 
 white ground beneath. The rays which proceed from the cross 
 are also of red cloth pasted on. The circle which represents the 
 crown of thorns, running through the limbs of the cross, is of 
 two colours, divided by the waving line ; the inner colour is green 
 
 F 
 
34 
 
 CHRISTMAS DECORATION 
 
 and the outer colour purple, both of cloth pasted on ; or the cross 
 and the ground of the inner circle may be of gold-coloured cloth, 
 pasted upon the white ground. 
 
 The next device (No. 11) is thus constructed : the outer circle 
 is a hoop, covered with evergreen, ornamented with everlastings, 
 and with white glazed calico strained behind, as in the former 
 device. The quatrefoil is of wire, covered with yellow ever- 
 lastings,'* jewelled at intervals with red everlastings. The 
 spandrels between the circle and quatrefoil are covered with 
 purple cloth, pasted on the calico ground, with a spot of black 
 
 NO. XI. WALL ORNAMENT. 
 
 cloth. The letters of the sacred monogram are cut out of red 
 cloth and pasted on, the horizontal stroke through the top of 
 the H being of gold-coloured cloth, and the ornamental bosses on 
 
OF CHURCHES. 
 
 35 
 
 each side of the monogram of a bunch of yellow and red ever- 
 lastings. Some of our readers may be glad to have the meaning 
 of the monogram explained, for it is by no means obvious, and 
 involves a curious and interesting piece of ecclesiastical sym- 
 bolism. It is composed of the old English letters I.H.O. They 
 are sometimes written I.H.S., and are popularly taken to be the 
 initials of the three words lesus Hominum Salvator, i.e., Jesus 
 the Saviour of mankind. But in reality they are a transcript into 
 Roman letters of the old Greek monogram ih 2 ., i.e., I.E.S. ; the 
 first three letters of the name of lESOVS. The stroke over the 
 top, which looks as if it were intended only for an ornamental 
 filling in of the design, is the usual mark that the word over 
 which it is placed is contracted. The corresponding monogram, 
 which may be introduced in a similar frame work as a pendant to 
 the one here given, is XP, which are the Greek letters Ch R, the 
 inital letters of the name CHRISTOS. 
 
 The same devices, on a smaller scale, may be used for the 
 decoration of the panels of a font or pulpit ; only, in that case, the 
 material must be slightly modified. The white glazed calico, which 
 has a wonderful effect, like satin, at a distance, looks only like 
 glazed calico when near the eye. White cloth or white velvet 
 should be used instead for the ground of smaller devices ; the ever- 
 green border must be made of smaller evergreens, and instead of 
 bunches of everlastings, and spots of red and white cloth, red 
 and white camellias, and other flowers, may be introduced. The 
 decorator will find in the wall devices, given in the Frontis- 
 piece, and in the illustrations of the wall devices, suggestions 
 of other patterns which, with a little ingenuity and good taste, 
 may be successfully treated in the more elaborate style indicated 
 in these two examples. 
 
3G 
 
 CHRISTMAS DECORATION 
 
 VIII. 
 
 JaimHs. 
 
 UE Church interiors are usually very cold in colour ; it is 
 one of the greatest faults they have. Stained glass, 
 wherever it is introduced, does much to remedy the 
 
 NO. XIII. BANNER. 
 
OF CHURCHES. 
 
 37 
 
 defect ; but it still leaves something to be desired in the arcades 
 and vacant wall spaces. 
 
 Our foliage decorations are of the soberest hues of green, and 
 not a little of their pleasing effect depends upon the bunches of 
 red berries with which they illuminate the Church. A still 
 further judicious introduction of colour will be found to add 
 greatly to the general effect of the decorations. This may be 
 accomplished, so far as the walls are concerned, partly by the 
 texts, partly by introducing colour into the wall devices in the 
 way we have described. There is another method of getting a 
 little colour into the body of the Church by means of Banners 
 suspended from the walls, or hung out from the capitals of the 
 piers, which will be found very effective. Let the reader call to 
 mind the banners of the Knights of the Garter hung over their 
 stalls in St. George’s Chapel, Windsor ; or the tattered banners of 
 arms which still remain, with sword, spurs, and helmet, as 
 monumental trophies, in some of our country Churches ; or even 
 the school flags which have been carried into Church on the 
 school-feast day, and reared up against a pillar ; and he will at 
 once remember the beautiful effect produced by the heraldic 
 colours and by the flowing folds of the drapery, stirred now and 
 then by a passing draught, contrasting with the rigid architec- 
 tural lines. We venture to suggest the introduction of this 
 pleasing method of heightening the effect of our Church decora- 
 tions ; and we give a^ few examples of different forms in which 
 these bpviiners may be made. First, the pinnacles of a screen 
 may be terminated with little banners made of cardboard, and 
 painted with symbols or coats of arms. The simplest form of the 
 lance pennon consists of a long-pointed strip of material, which 
 may be carried on a short rod cut out of the nearest copse, with 
 a strip of coloured material rolled spirally around it. Next in 
 order of elaboration is the triangular banner. It is the half of a 
 banner cut diagonally, and the decorator must be careful to make 
 it of the right shape, and to attach it correctly to its staff. A 
 parallelogram of material longer than it is wide, divided diago- 
 nally, will make two of them. The long side of the original 
 parallelogram is to be applied to the staff with the right angle at 
 the bottom. A long swallow-tailed streamer is next in simplicity. 
 It is the heraldic shape of a knight’s pennon, and may very pro- 
 perly be charged with the arms of the patron, or any other which 
 might with propriety iDe introduced in stained glass into the 
 windows, or on a hatchment on the walls of the Church. The 
 shield-shaped banner (No. 12), of which we give an illustration, 
 may be charged with similar arms, or with any Christian symbol. 
 The one which we give as a specimen has a green ground, the 
 cross upon it is white, with a line of green and gold lace running 
 
38 
 
 CHEISTMAS DECOEATION 
 
 tlirougli the centre of the cross. The central monogram has 
 letters cut out of red cloth and applied upon a gold-coloured 
 circle. The vandyked edge at the top of the shield should also 
 be of white or gold lace. The lace of which we speak in the 
 description of this and the other banners may be bought in a 
 great variety of patterns and colours of the manufacturers and 
 dealers in mediaeval draperies, e. g. of Messrs. Jones and Willis, 
 27, Great Eussell-street, London, and Birmingham. The next 
 example (No. 13) has a gold-coloured ground, a cross of white 
 and red lace, which, it will be observed, is carried down below 
 the cleft of the swallow-tail, and terminates in a fringe ; the 
 upper margin may be of purple cloth, with the quatrefoils cut 
 out to show the gold-coloured ground beneath, with a red spot 
 applied in the centre of each quatrefoil. The lower points are 
 furnished with a tassel of red and gold. The third example 
 (No. 14) has a white ground ; the cross is of gold with red spots; 
 and the central quatrefoil has a white ground, with gold mono- 
 gram edged with red. The border of the banner is of gold, with 
 red spots and little squares of green. The material of these 
 banners — depending upon the degree of cost which it is proposed 
 to expend upon them — may be bunting, cambric, or silk. The 
 crosses, borders, &c., may be sewed or pasted on. If pasted, make 
 the paste with glue water, i.e. boil a little glue for a long time in 
 water, and make the paste in the ordinary way with this water, 
 and it will resist the damp, or even a shower of rain. The arms 
 of the See, or the symbol of the saint to whom the Church is 
 dedicated, will afford appropriate devices for these banners, and 
 they may be made useful not only for the Church decoration, but 
 also for the school processions and similar occasions. 
 
 IX. 
 
 VERY effective way of filling wall spaces, and adding to 
 the decoration of the Church, is by putting up appro- 
 priate texts in suitable positions, in accordance with the 
 spirit of the 82nd Canon. There are various ways of forming the 
 
OF CHURCHES. 
 
 39 
 
 texts. One favourite way is to cut out the letters in card- 
 board, and to sew evergreen leaves on the cardboard. This 
 method has several disadvantages. When the text is at a 
 distance from the eye, the forms of leaves of the same colour are 
 lost, and the letters look of uniform green colour with an 
 irregular outline. Again, these letters are usually tacked sepa- 
 rately on the wall, which makes a very undesirable number of 
 nail-holes in the wall ; or, if they are stitched on calico or cloth, 
 their weight makes it difficult to keep the calico properly 
 stretched. If, however, the text is to he sufficiently near to the 
 eye, our first objection to this method of forming the letters 
 vanishes ; and if the letters be fastened to a board covered over 
 with paper or calico, the second objection will also be removed. 
 
 Another method is to cut the letters out of cloth of one colour, 
 and to stitch or paste them upon a ground of cloth of another 
 colour (most commonly red on white, or white or yellow on red), 
 and then to put a border of evergreen round the text. Where 
 the text is to be small and near the eye, this may be done with 
 very rich effect ; the ground may be treated as a riband, lined 
 with a contrasting colour, the ends fringed and allowed to hang 
 down ; in the text over the side screen from St. Matthew’s, City- 
 road, given at p. 53, the riband is of yellow velvet, lined and 
 fringed with red, and the letters are of red cloth fastened upon 
 it. One of the most effective grounds for a text of red cloth 
 letters is glazed white calico, which at a distance, has all the 
 effect of brilliant white satin. 
 
 But for ordinary texts to be placed upon a wall the cheapest, 
 easiest, and most satisfactory method is simply to paint the 
 letters on strong white paper, and to surround the text with a 
 broad margin or frame of evergreen. As this is the method 
 which we recommend, we have taken pains to qualify ourselves 
 to give to our readers minute directions as to the practice of it. 
 The paper to be used is such as is used for brass rubbings ; it 
 may be obtained of paper-hangers under the name of lining- 
 paper. The first requisite is to get a good alphabet, one which 
 is both handsome in form and readable by the whole congrega- 
 tion. Lombardic capitals, simply formed, combine these two 
 qualities. The letters of our own pattern alphabet are four 
 inches high, which will be found a very convenient size. Draw 
 carefully on strong cardboard a whole alphabet of the size you 
 want for the letters in your texts, and cut each letter out care- 
 fully ; this is to form your pattern alphabet. Having made it, 
 the rest of your work is easy. Cut your paper the size your 
 text is to be — noting this, that to make it strong enough to 
 avoid risk of easily tearing, it is better that the paper should 
 be doubled three-fold ; pick out the letters from your pattern 
 
40 
 
 CHRISTMAS DECORATION. 
 
 alphabet, lay them down upon the paper, and arrange them 
 properly at proper distances. Having the letters loose gives 
 you great facility for arranging them, especially where the 
 text is to curve over an arch. When the letters are adjusted 
 to your satisfaction, run a lead pencil round the edge of each, 
 and your text is sketched out. Then, to paint it. First decide 
 in what style it is to be painted. Plain red letters on the 
 white paper ground is the easiest, and is very satisfactory in 
 appearance ; or you may paint the ground red, leaving the 
 letters white, and you may enrich it by diapering the red 
 ground with gold ; or you may paint your ground of a pale 
 green and the letters red, leaving a narrow white margin round 
 each letter ; this, with the dark evergreen border, will have a 
 very pleasing effect. In all these varieties it will make the 
 letters more clear and distinct if you outline them with a 
 strong black line. You may enrich the texts ad lihitum ; e. g. 
 if you have red letters on a white ground, first draw a line of 
 gold round the outline of the letters, and then, to make them 
 more clear and distinct, a strong black line ; if you like, enrich 
 the border of the text with a margin of white quatrefoils on a 
 red ground. If you have white letters on a red ground, you 
 may cross-hatch the ground with gold lines, and run a line of 
 white quatrefoils, with a strong black dot in the centre, along 
 the margin. You may also throw in stops between the words ; 
 or a crown, or a cruciform, or other device, at the beginning 
 and end of a text ; and these ornamental accessories you may 
 illuminate with red, and white, and blue, and green, and gold. 
 
 It may be useful to some of our readers to be told what 
 materials to use in painting their texts ; and for the advantage 
 of those who live in country villages, we have ascertained the 
 prices at which a respectable colourman* will supply them free 
 by post. For yellow, orange chrome. No. 2, at 6f/. per oz. For 
 red, buy the best vermilion, at Q>d. per oz. For blue, use cobalt, 
 at 45. per oz. For gold, use bronze powder, at 2s. 6d per oz. ; 
 it makes a quite sufficiently good gold colour, which will keep 
 its brightness for years ; an ounce of it will gild half an acre of 
 paper. For green, buy emerald green, at 4,d. per oz. ; and if it is 
 too glaring, tone it down with the least touch of your vermilion. 
 All these colours are in powder ; to use them, get some mucilage, 
 at d)d. per bottle, mix the mucilage with water to the con- 
 sistency of common gum-water, and rub in your colour on a 
 
 * These prices are given us by Messrs. Brodie and Middleton, 79, Long- 
 acre, London. Probably all other respectable colourmen will supply the 
 same articles at about the same prices. If sent by post, a trifle under the 
 nominal weight will be sent, to make the parcel come under the postage 
 regulations. 
 
OF CnUECHES. 
 
 41 
 
 palette with a palette-knife, to a consistency suitable for painting 
 with. For black, use lamp-black in cake. 
 
 Frame your text on plastering or slating laths tacked together, 
 and fasten your border of mixed evergreens on the frame, taking 
 care that the leaves do not overshadow the text too much. 
 
 The appropriate situations for texts are the following : — in a 
 straight line under the wall-plate, as a cornice ; or under a 
 string-course ; or across the east wall of the chancel ; or in a 
 curve over the east window, or chancel arch, or tower arch, or 
 nave arches, or aisle windows. In the wall spaces it will usually 
 be convenient to arrange the texts in the form of a riband, or, 
 perhaps, in a panel framed with a border of evergreen. The 
 simplest way to make a riband is to take a strip of paper of 
 proper width and length, and fold it into the shape of a very 
 squat letter Z ; put your text on the two horizontal lines ; put 
 your evergreen border all round the margin of the paper, but 
 not along the creases where the paper is folded back ; ornament 
 the back of your riband (that is, the oblique strip which connects 
 the two portions of the text) with coloured lines ruled along 
 the margin, or with a diapered ground. 
 
 For a tall and narrow space a riband may be formed in a 
 similar way, of paper, making the horizontal portions for 
 receiving the text shorter in length and more in number. One 
 way of forming and finishing such a riband, or scroll, is to make 
 the written portions of the riband not horizontal, but inclined at 
 an angle to the horizon ; paint the text in red letters, finish the 
 margin of the text and of the back of the riband with marginal 
 lines of red, and up the middle of the riband put a lath covered 
 with evergreens, and finish at the top with a little cruciform device 
 formed of sprigs, or with a finial of ivy leaves set on wire stalks. 
 The effect will be that of a scroll turned round an evergreen staff. 
 
 A perusal of the proper Lessons, Epistle and Gospel, Psalms, 
 &c., for Christmas will suggest to the decorator an abundance of 
 appropriate texts. We give a few of the most obvious ones. 
 For very short texts take : — 
 
 us. 
 
 g^lhluia. 
 
 Moubrful dTounsclIor, ^krlasting Jatijcr, 
 
 prince of 
 
 For longer ones : — 
 
 61org to 6ob in tl^c ^ig^est. ©n €artlj peaa, goobbill tobarbs 
 iEuto us a dEi^ilb is born, unto us a ^on is gibcn. 
 
 G 
 
42 
 
 CHRISTMAS DECORATION 
 
 is bnm m §etIjU^£m. 
 
 (36ijh aitb pan is onz Christ ; (inb of tlje snbstana of l^is Jfat^er ; 
 man of il^z snbsiana of l^is mother. 
 
 %\z ®orb ioas mabe ^z$\ anb bb^lt among ns- 
 f bis bag is born nnto gon a ^abionr, fo^itl^ is Christ t^e |Torb. 
 For a long text, to run round a nave for example, take tliose 
 verses of tlie Te Deum : 
 
 ®;ijon art t^r |ling of dMorg, # Cl^rist. ®^^on art i\z €brrlasting 
 ^on of tl^e Jfat^rr. lEIjrn ^^on toobrst np'on %\^zz to briibrr man^ 
 ®^^on bibst not abl^or tijr Ilirgin’s toomb* 
 
 An appropriate text to be placed over or upon tlie Pulpit is : — 
 
 grljolb I bring gon glab tibings of grrat jog. 
 
 In attempting to give some more definite instructions for texts 
 and tlieir borders, there are three ways in which we might do 
 it. The first would be to draw out each suggestion separately, 
 and to have it printed in colours, and so present the whole 
 series of results in a form in which they could be understood 
 and appreciated at a glance. It is a method which would be 
 very agreeable to the reader, and not less agreeable to the 
 writer, since it would save a great deal of difficult and tedious 
 description ; but it is a method which would involve an expendi- 
 ture of some scores of pounds sterling in chromo-lithography. 
 The next best method would be to have the devices all drawn 
 out at length, and to indicate the colours by various lines, in 
 the way which heralds call tricking.” But this method 
 also would involve considerable expense in woodcuts, and would 
 occupy considerable space in these pages ; and after all, while it 
 gave the outlines of the device, it would leave the effect of the 
 colouring to the reader’s imagination. We are driven then to 
 indicate the various devices which we have to suggest by another 
 method, which it will need a little careful and minute description 
 on our part, and a little careful examination on the reader’s part, 
 to make intelligible. In the three texts which we have engraved 
 we have introduced the whole of the pattern alphabet, which we 
 submit for adoption ; and instead of running one border pattern 
 round each text, we have applied portions of different borders ; 
 so that out of the three texts we get nine different border 
 patterns ; which, by different combinations of the patterns, and 
 different systems of colouring, may be multiplied in infinitum. 
 We suggest that, before deciding upon any particular border and 
 system of colouring, the operator, by holding the page against 
 a window-pane, may trace from it on white paper the particular 
 pattern selected, and then colour it, so as to form some idea 
 
OF CHUECHES. 
 
 43 
 
 wlietlier its effect, wlien worked out, is likely to prove satisfactory 
 to tlie decorator’s taste. 
 
 And now, having numbered the texts and the different border 
 patterns for convenience of reference, we proceed to attempt to 
 describe the colours. We give the reader fair warning that the 
 description will be dry and tedious, and that he need not trouble 
 himself with it until he applies himself in earnest to the task of 
 actually w^orking out the device whose outline has the good 
 fortune to attract his preference. 
 
 Text I. (No. 15.) We will assume first that the letters of the 
 text are to be written in red on the plain white ground of the 
 paper ; then the initial and border patterns may be coloured as 
 follows ; — 
 
 1,2. These two initial patterns are intended to be used together 
 at the beginning of the text ; but the same patterns may also 
 be used separately for borders. 
 
 1. Has strong red lines, with a Vandyke pattern between. 
 The shaded triangles of the Vandyke are to be red; the plain 
 triangles ivhite, with a red spot. 
 
 2. Has two strong red lines, and between them a row of green 
 spots on a ivhite ground. 
 
 3. Is simply a broad green line. 
 
 4. Consists of two lines ; the outer a broad line of red, the 
 inner a narrower line of green. 
 
 5. Has two strong green (or red) lines, with a row of Mack 
 spots between on a wldte ground. To break the monotony which a 
 long border of this kind would perhaps have, a stop may be intro- 
 duced at intervals, composed of a quatrefoil on a red ground. 
 
 6. Consists of two strong green (or red) lines and between them 
 a white spot on a gold ground. 
 
 The initial cross in this text is coloured thus : the central cross 
 is ivhite with red border, in the angles is first (next to the cross) 
 ivhite then red, then ivhite ; the circular rim has black spots on a 
 white ground, the outer line being of red. 
 
 If the letters and ground of the text be of other colours than 
 those we have supposed, then the colours of the initial and border 
 patterns and devices, and the stops between the words, must 
 be modified to make them harmonize, and this remark will apply 
 to the texts which follow. It would occupy too much space to 
 described the modifications at length. We have, however, taken 
 different colours for the letters and grounds in other texts, in 
 order to indicate to the decorator the system to be observed. 
 
 Text II. (No. IG.) Let us here assume the letters to be wldte 
 on^ a red ground. Then the borders will be as follows : — 
 The colours of the initial pattern must follow those of the border 
 which may be selected. 
 
44 
 
 CHRISTMAS DECORATION 
 
 
 NO. XV.— TEXT, WITH 
 
 2 
 
 NO. XVI.— TEXT, WITH 
 
 NO. XVII. TEXT. WITH 
 
o 
 
 O 
 
 OF CHURCHES. 
 
 45 
 
 D 
 
 ORNAMENTAL BORDERS. 
 
CHRISTMAS DECORATION 
 
 4G 
 
 1. Has two strong lines of green, witli a Vandyke pattern 
 between, composed of a red line on tlie ivhite ground : tlie inner 
 triangles of tlie vandyke have a blue spot. To prevent monotony 
 a stop may be introduced at intervals consisting of a ivhite quatre- 
 foil, or five-leaved flower on a green ground. 
 
 2. Has a green ground, with a ivhite chevron or zig-zag upon 
 it, the inner triangles marked with a spot of black. 
 
 3. Has a ivhite chevron on a red (or greeii) ground; the stop con- 
 sists of a black circumference and spots on green (or red) ground. 
 
 4. Has the inner line red and the outer line blue ; the inner 
 triangles are white with a green spot, and the outer triangles 
 blue with a white spot. 
 
 5. Has two strong lines of green, the flowers and spots red on 
 white ground. 
 
 6. Has two strong lines of black, the quatrefoils white on a 
 green ground. 
 
 7. Two strong lines of red, the black circle is charged with a 
 green quatrefoil, the centre of the quatrefoil and the spots outside 
 the circle are black. 
 
 Where a text is at a great distance, or in a disadvantageous 
 light, it will come out more distinctly if the ground is blue. 
 Where the text is very near to any other decoration (as a dossal) 
 or piece of furniture (as a curtain) which has much red in it, it 
 will be better to make the ground of the text blue. We will go 
 through some of the above borders again on this supposition. 
 
 Text II. (No. 16). Letters on a 5/we ground. Then the 
 borders may be thus : — 
 
 1. The marginal lines and the zig-zag line blue, with red spots 
 on the ivhite triangles. 
 
 2. Make the inner line red and the outer blue, the chevron 
 white ; make the inner triangles red with a ivhite spot, and the 
 outer triangles blue with a white spot. 
 
 3. The inner line red, the outer blue; the inner triangles 
 white with red spot, the outer triangles blue with white spot. 
 
 The initial cross in this text is of the same outline as in the 
 Text II., for the sake of making one pattern serve for both ; but 
 a richer and more elaborate ornament is produced out of the 
 same outline by the method of treatment which we proceed to 
 describe. The inner cross of gold, with a blue square in the 
 centre, and red terminations. The margin round that cross is 
 to be left white ; the angles coloured thus, beginning at the out- 
 side — the circumference line black, the next ivhite, green with 
 ivJiite spot, ivhite, red vandyke, gold leaf with a red rib. The 
 colours should be bounded by a tolerably strong black line. 
 
 Text HI. (No. 17). Let us, for the sake of obtaining greater 
 variety and richness of treatment, assume that the letters of this 
 
OF CHUECHER. 
 
 47 
 
 text are gold on a red ground. The same treatment of the 
 borders, with the omission of the gold, will serve for ivhite letters 
 on red gi’ound. Then the borders will be : — 
 
 1. Next to the red ground of the text will come ivhite with a 
 red spot. The lines which compose the lozenges are green, \vith 
 a blue spot at the intersections (the green lines must not approach 
 too near the blue spots) ; the triangles are to be red, the circular 
 ornament within the white lozenge is gold Vandyke with a red 
 marginal line. 
 
 2. Next to the red ground, white with a red Vandyke at its 
 upper margin ; the outer fillet is white, with red arches with a 
 irhite spot, over a green flower with hlach centre and stamens. 
 
 8. The red ground is vandyked at its edges, the fillet above is 
 white, then a strong green line ; next comes a row of ornaments 
 on a udiite ground ; the ornaments are composed of a gold 
 quatrefoil, a green spot in the centre, and the filling in between 
 the quatrefoil and circle red. The five spots which alternate 
 with this quatrefoil ornament are green, and the outer line hlue. 
 
 After the suggestions already given, the decorator will have no 
 trouble in planning for himself the arrangement of the borders 
 4, 5, 6, which are of very similar character. In the initial cross 
 the colours may be thus arranged : the centre red, with white 
 patterns in its limbs, upon a gold cross flory ; then take one of 
 the angles between the limbs of the cross, and, beginning from 
 the centre, the colours will be ivhite spots on green, gold, red, 
 with white triangles. 
 
 
 X. 
 
 S ^HE Pulpit may best be decorated by a wreath of ever- 
 > green, enriched with flowers or berries, laid in the 
 ; hollow moulding which will usually be found round its 
 upper margin. Small devices may be suspended on its sides. 
 These devices may be of the same kind as those described for 
 wall spaces, only of a smaller size ; or, since the Pulpit panels are 
 near the eye, the devices upon them may be of a more minute 
 design and richer material ; for example, circles, quatrefoils, tri- 
 angles, cruciform devices, &c., may be formed of wood, covered 
 
48 
 
 CHRISTMAS DECORATION 
 
 with cloth or velvet, and monograms be emblazoned on them in 
 everlastings or holly berries. We will describe one as a sample. 
 Take a quatrefoil of board, twelve inches or thereabouts across, 
 cover its face with yellow velvet and its edge with red velvet ; 
 within a quarter of an inch of the edge of the flat face carry a 
 marginal line all round of a double row of everlastings ; in the 
 field of the quatrefoil put an or a cross patee, cut 
 
 out of red velvet and edged with everlastings ; finish each out- 
 ward angle of the quatrefoil with three small laurel leaves, and 
 feather off the leaves by putting behind each of them a sprig 
 of yew or other light feathery evergreen, and put a bunch of four 
 or five holly berries at the base of the leaves. 
 
 The Beading Desk may be decorated in a similar manner. 
 
 Canons of the Church of England require that the 
 Communion-table and the Font shall stand in their places 
 in Church when they are not in actual use ; and the 
 motive, doubtless, is that they may serve for symbols of the two 
 Sacraments which Christ has ordained in His Church. When, 
 therefore, the Church is decorated generally for any one of the 
 great Christian festivals, it seems only right that these symbols 
 should be also decorated, and in a proportion which shall mark 
 the importance of the things which they symbolize. On the 
 festival on which we commemorate the birth of our Saviour, it 
 seems specially appropriate that we should give prominence to 
 the symbol of that Sacrament by which we are born into Him. 
 The mere fact that the Font is a small, and often beautiful, object, 
 and that it is very near to the eyes of the surrounding congre- 
 gation, would make it fitting that, if decorated at all, it should 
 be done with richer material and more careful workmanship than 
 may suffice for those parts of the decorations which are on a 
 larger scale, and to be seen as a whole from a greater distance. 
 Accordingly, here the lines of green must be smaller in size, and 
 more carefully made, and of choicer evergreens. White paper 
 and glazed calico will not suffice for the devices. In short, all 
 the minuteness of elaboration and rarity of material against 
 
 XL 
 
OF CHURCHES. 
 
 49 
 
 which we warned the decorator in the general trimming of arches, 
 piers, and wall devices, may be well bestowed here. Fonts are so 
 various in material and design, that it is a little difficult to 
 embrace them all in any general directions. Some are plain, 
 massive old bowls, which have little to recommend them archi- 
 tecturally, except their venerable antiquity, though they are 
 equally to be honoured for their sacred use. Others are perfect 
 architectural gems, on which precious stones and exquisite 
 carving have been lavished with loving prodigality. In the 
 former kind of Font we must take the general outline, and try to 
 give, by our decorations, a beauty which does not otherwise exist. 
 In the latter, we must be careful not to hide the architectural 
 beauties, but to heighten them by our floral decoration. Sup- 
 pose the Font to be of the former kind — say a plain octagonal 
 bowl, supported by a massive central shaft, with a few rude 
 mouldings, which spread into a base at the bottom. If the Font 
 does not stand on a step, put a wreath of evergreen round the 
 bottom of the base close on the ground, and if the shaft will 
 carry a spiral wreath, let it be so adorned. The upper and 
 lower margins of the bowl may have a fringe of green, carefully 
 made, with a preponderance of the lighter kinds of evergreen, 
 box, yew, &c., and plenty of effective variegated holly and red 
 berries. The hollow of the Font may be filled with moss, rising 
 into a semicircular green mound at the top ; which mound may 
 be ornamented with primulas or other flowers stuck in at regular 
 intervals, and a bunch of white flowers at the top — camellias, if 
 they may be had ; or variegated holly in default of flowers of any 
 kind. If the Font is placed on a step, the step may be carpeted 
 with moss, a thickness or two of brown paper being laid under it 
 to prevent the step being discoloured. A more elaborate fashion 
 would be to make a frame of laths to mark out the panels of the 
 Font bowl, as shown in the woodcut No. 18, on the next page. 
 These panels may be filled in with ornaments of evergreens and 
 flowers, as indicated in the woodcut. A more sumptuous way of 
 filling the panels would be by small symbolical and cruciform 
 devices, of the same shapes perhaps as those already described 
 for wall spaces, but more minutely and carefully made ; which 
 devices can be fastened in the centre of the panels by invisible 
 wires attached to the framework of lath. 
 
 If we describe another more elaborately-decorated Font, and 
 give an illustration of a third, we shall probably have supplied 
 the reader with sufficient hints on this part of our subject. The 
 Font which we describe is a plain octagonal bowl, on shafts 
 of Purbeck marble, standing on a Bath-stone base ; trails of 
 evergreen sprigs, gradually tapering off, were carried out from 
 between the shafts upon tlie white stone base ; the sides were 
 
 H 
 
50 
 
 CHRISTMAS DECORATION 
 
 ornamented with four devices and four bunches of real flowers 
 alternating. The devices were of the kind which we have 
 already described ; the ground white cloth, the marginal lines of 
 gold everlastings, and the central monogram or design of holly 
 berries. Variegated red and green leaves were laid over the lip 
 of the Font ; the sides of the leaves overlapping one another, so 
 that the points hung down over the side of the Font and formed a 
 
 kind of vandyked margin. On the cover was laid a mound of 
 moss, which was relieved by leaves of variegated holly, primrose 
 flowers, and bunches of red holly berries, laid alternately in 
 circles round the mound ; the mound was finished with a plain 
 cross made of wood, covered with a single row of laurel leaves 
 overlapping one another, and the edge covered with white ever- 
 
OF CHURCHES. 
 
 ol 
 
 lastings. Where the Font has serpentine shafts and carved panels, 
 and the like architectural features, the foliage must be sparingly- 
 applied ; and each Font will require a special design for its 
 decoration, and sometimes it may be desirable not to decorate the 
 architectural features of the Font at all, for fear of injuring polished 
 marble and delicate carving. In such case, at least the steps may 
 be carpeted with moss, starred with flowers, and the bowl may be 
 filled with a great bouquet of the choicest flowers obtainable. 
 
 The very pretty illustration which we give on the opposite page 
 enables us to show the way in which the effect of the Font may be 
 greatly heightened by a temporary canopy. Here the upper step 
 of the Font is intended to be covered with a flat carpet of moss (laid 
 on a board or two or three thicknesses of brown paper, to prevent 
 the stone from being discoloured), heightened by bunches of 
 everlastings and holly berries ; or, still better, of primroses ; the 
 flowers and berries may be formed into monograms or geome- 
 trical devices. To the chamfered upper edge of the bowl is 
 fitted a framework of lath, and this is decorated with a wreath 
 of evergreen, which forms at once the wreath of the margin of 
 the bowl and the base of the canopy. Upon this rim of lath 
 is carried the canopy represented in the cut, which is formed of 
 laths simply tied or tacked together, and their faces covered with 
 arbor vitae or other similar fine evergreen. The trefoil arches 
 are formed of wire covered with everlastings, and with a bunch 
 of everlastings at their junction with the laths to represent 
 capitals, while the base wreath is marked at each upright lath 
 with a larger bunch to represent a base, and bunches of holly 
 berries alternate with the everlastings in the wreath. The inter- 
 lacing lines in the upper part of the canopy are formed of chains 
 of holly berries ; the points where they are fixed to the uprights 
 and where they cross each other being marked with ever- 
 lastings. Over the apex are put three wreaths of everlastings, 
 bound round with a spiral line of holly berries. The wreaths 
 diminish in size, and represent the steps of the calvary, and on 
 the top is fixed a cross of lath covered with arbor vitae, the 
 points and intersection marked with red berries and a single 
 line of golden everlastings on wire, forming the circle which 
 represents the glory round the cross. The pinnacles are fonned 
 of lath (fixed on the octagonal base by a single screw) covered 
 with evergreen, and finished with a little trefoil of bunches of 
 everlastings fixed on wire stalks. Instead of the cross a star 
 might be substituted, formed of a wire outline, with a single row 
 of everlastings or of berries on each side of the wire, and the 
 edges fringed’ with light sprigs of yew or other light feathery 
 green ; or, a terminal ornament may be formed of eight or ten 
 carefully-selected small ivy leaves, on wire stalks, with perhaps a 
 
52 
 
 CHRISTMAS DECORATION 
 
 sprig of evergreen for a finish at top. The upright lines of the 
 canopy might also be crocheted in a similar manner with ivy 
 leaves ; in which case perhaps it would be desirable to introduce 
 single ivy leaves on the faces of the uprights, which may be done 
 by merely sticking their stalks under the arbor vitae sprigs. The 
 under sides of the laths of which the canopy is made may be left 
 undisguised, or they may be covered with arbor vitae, which 
 perhaps will rather mar the effect of the design ; or they may be 
 painted white with a spiral line of green. 
 
 This description of a temporary canopy will sufficiently suggest 
 the way in which a permanent Font canopy may be treated. 
 
 XII. 
 
 l^jj^'^TANDAEDS for lights are very easily treated. If they 
 are for a single light, trail up the shaft a fine spiral 
 wEfe wreath made of box, yew, and other small evergreen, and 
 enriched with everlastings, such as are represented round the shafts 
 of the Screen work on the next page. Bound the socket of the 
 candle or gas-burner put a little coronal made of single holly leaves 
 sewn together so that the points stand outwards ; or of the small- 
 leaved terminal ivy twigs enriched with berries or everlastings ; 
 or of flowers and leaves. If the Standard have two branches, stop 
 the spiral wreath of the shaft with a little coronal, and place 
 an ornament as above described round the socket of each light. 
 If there are three or more branches, in addition to what has 
 already been suggested connect the branches by chains of similar 
 manufacture to the spiral wreath, or of holly berries. 
 
 A Corona may have a wreath of holly plentifully enriched 
 with berries round each of its circles, and sprigs of yew tied 
 upon its chains, to turn them into chains of green, and coronals 
 such as those already described round its sockets. The effect 
 of the holly, with its picturesque glossy leaves and red berries 
 brought into strong relief of light and shade by the lights is 
 very beautiful. 
 
OF CHUECHES. 
 
 5o 
 
 XIII. 
 
 decorate a Screen requires very little ingenuity and not 
 mucli labour. The leading lines of tlie Screen dictate 
 the design of the decoration. Cover the face of the 
 
 leading lines with green, remembering that single leaves of 
 variegated holly, or of small ivy stuck into the more sombre 
 background of yew or arbor vitse, will give force and piquancy ; 
 heighten the bases and capitals with berries or everlastings. 
 
 Put little ornaments of trefoils, quatrefoils, or whorls of holly or 
 other leaves into the spandrels. If there is sufficient room put a 
 text into the hollow moulding of the cornice. Crest the upper 
 beam with sprigs of holly or terminal shoots of spruce fir. If 
 the Screen is of early character and has round shafts for its 
 
54 
 
 CHEISTMAS DECORATION 
 
 mullions, then put spiral wreaths round them. The woodcut 
 given on the preceding page of one of the side Screens of St. 
 Matthew’s Church, City-road, London, as it has been decorated 
 for several Christmases, will give an illustration, of the general 
 design for an early Screen, and will show clearly the small 
 wreaths to be used for Light Standards and other similar work, 
 and the small spandrel ornaments of holly leaves and berries. 
 
 The architectural effect of many Churches would be very 
 much improved by the restoration of a Screen to the chancel 
 arch. The Christmas decorations afford an opportunity to try 
 the experiment by the erection of a temporary Screen, which 
 may easily be formed of a few splines, hoops, and pieces of wire 
 covered with evergreens. 
 
 The effect of a side Screen to hide the organ, or of a Screen 
 to the tower arch to keep off the draft, where the tower is used as 
 an entrance to the Church, may be similarly tried in this tempo- 
 rary work. A design for such a Screen will be found on p. 69. 
 
 same spirit which prompts us to decorate the Lord’s 
 House at all in honour of His Birthday, impels us 
 especially to give a festive appearance to that part of it 
 which is, in the language of the Homily, ‘Hhe Lord’s Banqueting 
 House” ; where, for His faithful people, His own body and blood 
 are spread forth for the Lord’s Birthday Feast. If those bare 
 plastered walls, and that worm-eaten table with a rain-spotted 
 red cloth upon it, belonged to the School-room which we were 
 called upon to make ready for a Christmas School Feast, what 
 should we do ? We should festoon the walls, and cover them 
 with appropriate mottoes and floral devices, and hang the school 
 flags up here and there, and strip all the gardens in the neigh- 
 bourhood of their rare pale winter flowers to put in bouquets 
 among the furniture and viands of the table. We surely need 
 not fear that we ‘‘ are going too far ” when we do only as much, 
 or not so much, to decorate the chancel of the Church for the 
 
 
 XIV. 
 
OF CHURCHES. 
 
 Christmas Communion as we should to the School-room for a 
 children’s holiday. 
 
 Our first care, then, will be to take away the chill desolate 
 look of the bare plastered walls. This may veiy easily and 
 effectively be done with a little ingenuity. We shall gain some 
 valuable hints if we call to mind how the bare walls of Churches 
 and halls were covered and made habitable and comely in the 
 olden times by carved wood, or panelling, or hangings, or fresco 
 paintings. The general richness of effect produced by hangings, 
 or by panelling whether of stone or wood, or by fresco orna- 
 mentation, may be produced very easily with our evergreens and 
 wall devices and texts. To enrich the bare wall it is only neces- 
 sary to cover it over with some pattern. This may be done very 
 easily. Put two upright laths in the angles of the east end of 
 the chancel and connect them by horizontal pieces at top and 
 bottom, making a rectangular framework. Its height must 
 depend very much upon the proportions of the Church, the height 
 of the sill of the east window, &c. ; as a general rule, it should 
 be from five to eight or nine or ten feet high. Tie thin strings 
 diagonally crossing each other, so as to divide the space inclosed 
 by the framework into lozenge pattern. At each point where 
 the strings intersect fasten a sprig of holly or a leaf of ivy, 
 taking care that the sprigs or leaves are all nearly of the same 
 size. At a distance the string will be invisible, and the effect 
 will be that the east wall will be diapered with holly sprigs. It 
 would answer very well to put the strings between the upper and 
 lower laths in vertical lines at equal distances, and to tie the 
 sprigs to these vertical strings ; but by the method above 
 described the measuring of distances on the strings is saved, and 
 to a great extent the tying of the sprigs is saved, because the 
 majority of them may be safely lodged between the strings and 
 the wall without any fastening ; or, instead of invisible strings, 
 red or white tape may be used, so that the lozenge pattern shall 
 be visible ; and the holly sprigs may be either lodged at the 
 intersection of the red or white lozenge pattern as before, or 
 tied in the centre of the lozenges by invisible strings. A pattern 
 of this kind is indicated on the east wall of the interior view of 
 a Church, which we have given as a frontispiece ; it is finished 
 at the top with a border of short texts between marginal lines 
 of evergreen, and crested with holly sprigs. These kinds of 
 patterns may be varied indefinitely by a little ingenuity ; a 
 whole series of them is suggested by ordinary tapestry or wall- 
 painting diapers. Another series of patterns is suggested by 
 ordinary arcading and panelling. The simplest form of this 
 series may be made by forming a framework of laths as before, 
 and fastening vertical lines of wreath at short distances between 
 
56 
 
 CHRISTMAS DECORATION 
 
 the upper and lower laths. These lengths of wreath may 
 either be made on string as for piers or they may be made on 
 laths. A little variety of this might be made by leaving the 
 uppermost two feet of the string or the lath uncovered with 
 green, and then from a point in the upper horizontal lath, 
 midway between each pair of upright laths, to let festoons 
 droop to meet the upright lines of green, and so to form a kind 
 of arcade with convex instead of concave arches. The points of 
 these arches may be finished with holly sprigs, or terminal 
 shoots of spruce fir, or triplets of ivy leaves set on wire stalks. 
 This simple style of ornament may very well be used on the side 
 walls of a sacrarium when a richer pattern is used on the east 
 wall ; the simple pattern will give enrichment enough to the side 
 walls ; a more elaborate pattern would be lost in the sharp per- 
 spective in which it would be seen from the nave. 
 
 The picture which we here give represents a more elaborate 
 example of this style of decoration ; it was designed by J. Brooks, 
 Esq., Architect, of 5, Bloomsbury-square, for the reredos of 
 St. Matthias’s, Stoke Newington, some years ago. The straight 
 lines of the framework are made of splines screwed together ; 
 the circles are of children’s wooden hoops tied to one another 
 and to the splines ; the quatrefoils are of wire tied with the 
 
OF CHURCHES. 
 
 57 
 
 'same string which fastens the hoops. The whole framework is 
 then covered with arbor vitse or yew ; the points of the cusps 
 are finished with single leaves set on wire stalks : the points of 
 contact of the hoops are finished with sprigs, and a cresting of 
 sprigs is run along the top. The crockets and finial of the centre 
 gable are very easily formed by putting out little bunches of 
 green at intervals when tying on the evergreen. Take care to 
 put these bunches on nearly at right angles to the line ; when 
 the string with which they are tied is tightened, they will 
 assume a more vertical position. The dossal was covered with 
 velvet and diapered with real camellia flowers, and the cross 
 was also made of wood and covered with camellia flowers set 
 upon their own leaves.* The text below the sill of the east 
 window is bordered with laurel leaves regularly disposed. Two 
 methods of ornamenting the blank wall on each side of the 
 east window are indicated ; each of these vertical lines of 
 ornament should be finished at the height of the spring of the 
 arch with a corresponding finial. Additional designs for Eeredoses 
 will be found at pp. 68, 70, and 76. 
 
 XV. 
 
 ^^a|ST seems to us that the Christmas decoration should not be 
 lo the interior of the Ohiu’ch. The entrance to 
 the Church and the precincts of the Church should give 
 premonitory indications of the festive adornments within the 
 temple. A wreath may be put into the external hollow mould- 
 ings of the arch of the great doorway, or over the arch by way 
 of hood-moulding, after the fashion of the door shown in the 
 
 * There are one or two ingenious devices for preserving these flowers 
 in their freshness which some of our readers may ho glad to be made 
 acquainted with. One is to put a good coating of strong mucilage, by help 
 of a camel-hair pencil, at the back of the lower part of the petals, to prevent 
 them from falling off. The other is that a single drop of water dropped 
 into the very eye of a flower once a day will keep it fresh for a considerable 
 time. Drops of water sprinkled upon the petals discolour them. 
 
V 
 
 58 CHRISTMAS DECORATION 
 
 cut at p. 26. On the exterior of a doorway the arch will be 
 more pointed, and the text must follow the line of the arch. 
 
 The text for an exterior decoration should be one which refers 
 to the character of the building about to be entered : 
 
 I hiRS glab smir mho m-e : toill ga inla t)^z pause 
 
 of 1^£ ^arh. 
 
 is uaue atber hut f^e pause af dlab, uub t^is is f^e (Hate 
 af peuteu. 
 
 Pg pause sljall he ealleh l|e pause af ^rager. 
 
 Jeep lljg faat fol^eu fijau gaesf fa the Pause af diah. 
 
 ^Ije porh is iu pis polg S^emple, 
 
 ®iljasaeher faill, let ^im hriuh af f^e Mater af |Tife freelg* 
 
 Come unta me all ge t^at labour aub are l^eahg labeu, aub | laill 
 gibe gou rest. 
 
 For Easter Sunday : 
 
 ^Heluia"! Cljrist is risen, gilleluia! 
 
 The text over an inner doorway may convey a final lesson to 
 the departing congregation : 
 
 Co, aub siu ua mare. 
 
 griug fartl^ fruits meet far repeutauee. 
 
 pe ge baers af t^e htarb, aub uat ^fearers aulg. 
 
 pe uat forgetful Ijearers, but baers af tlje laarb. 
 
 For Easter Sunday : 
 
 |f ge tl^eu be risen fait^ Cljrist, seek tbase tljiugs faljieb are abobe^ 
 tabere Claris! sittet^ an the rig^t Ijaub of ^ab. 
 
 The device in the pediment over the door may be any one of 
 the wall devices already given. 
 
OF CHURCHES. 
 
 50 
 
 XVI. 
 
 General ipiim. 
 
 planning the decorations of a Church for Christmas, it 
 will be wise first to sit down and count the cost, i. e. to 
 calculate the quantity of material, the number of hands, 
 and the length of time which can be given to it ; and to under- 
 take only so much as can be well executed. 
 
 We beg to recommend very strongly, in the first instance, that 
 the work should not be put off to the last day or two. A good 
 deal of work is involved in decorating a Church properly, espe- 
 cially if the Church is large ; and if the work be left to the last 
 day — we speak out of our experience — the decorators find the 
 work unexpectedly heavy, they get fatigued and worried, the 
 work has to be hurried at last, some things have to be left 
 undone, and there is no time to put the final touches which are 
 so important to the successful effect of what has been done. 
 Happily, there is a good deal of the work which can be done before 
 hand. Texts may be written, and frames for the devices put 
 together at any time ; even the putting together of the ever- 
 greens may be done some days before Christmas. There is no 
 fear that the evergreens will fade if they are kept in a proper 
 place — laid on a damp cold floor for example ; and there is no 
 reason why they should become deranged if they are properly 
 made in the first instance, and carefully handled afterwards. 
 Again, the general plan of the decorations should be well con- 
 sidered beforehand, so that no more may be undertaken than the 
 c^uantity of material, the number of hands, and the time to be 
 devoted to it, will enable the decorators comfortably to carry out ; 
 and so that the time, labour, and material may be applied to the 
 best advantage, i.e., so as to produce the most effective results. 
 Another important preliminary caution is this, do not fall into the 
 error, so common to tyros, of wasting time in minute elaboration 
 which will be invisible at the distance from which the work is to 
 be viewed. Bo±d outline and effective masses of colour are the 
 points to be especially aimed at. In your calculations of time, 
 leave ample time for putting up the devices after they are made ; 
 and time, besides, for giving those final touches to the work upon 
 
60 
 
 CHRISTMAS DECORATION 
 
 wliicb. as much of its finisli and effect depend, as tlie effect of a 
 painting depends upon tlie final touches which the artist adds 
 after his picture is hung on the walls of the Academy. 
 
 It will be wise also not to use up the available means in a few 
 elaborate decorations, but to spread the decoration, as far as 
 possible, generally over the Church. If the work is to be done 
 with but scanty material, labour, and time, the decorator will 
 do well to attend first to the east end of the chancel, the chancel- 
 arch, and the capitals of the nave piers ; if more can be done, 
 let the pillars next be wreathed ; then let the wall spaces be 
 filled with devices ; first, the wall spaces of the chancel ; then 
 the spandrels of the nave arcades ; then, the spaces between the 
 aisle windows ; then, the west end of the nave. After this, the 
 other adornments which we have described or indicated, may be 
 filled in as means and taste dictate. This fact is carefully to be 
 noted, that decorations are not always effective in proportion to 
 the costliness of material and the amount of elaboration bestowed 
 upon them. Moreover, it is not to be forgotten by a judicious 
 decorator that it is the costliness of material and the elabora- 
 tion of details which are especially likely to provoke opposition 
 on the part of those who do not take kindly to the improved 
 system of Christmas decoration. Effective outline is the thing 
 to be most carefully studied, especially in the devices and deco- 
 rations which are to be seen from a distance. 
 
 If we were requested to suggest a scheme of decoration for an 
 ordinary village or town Church of the normal type — chancel, 
 nave, and aisles, west tower, and south porch — which would be 
 sufficiently handsome in appearance, not too burdensome in 
 execution, and not calculated to excite an undesirable ferment 
 in the minds of ordinary Church-goers, we should suggest 
 something like the following : — Over the east window put a 
 hood-moulding of evergreen. Under the sill of the window 
 run a text in white letters on a plain green ground, surrounded 
 by a broad border of evergreen. Divide the wall space under 
 this text into panels by upright laths covered with evergreen ; 
 and in the central space, over the Communion Table, put a 
 device of some kind ; if objections are entertained to a cruci- 
 form device, put a simple circular wreath of holly ; those who 
 are imaginative will, perhaps, see in its prickly leaves and red 
 berries a symbol of the crown of thorns which He whose birth 
 they celebrate was born to wear, and to which we look forward 
 even at His birthday feast. If there is a blank space which 
 requires filling on the side walls of the chancel, put a device on 
 each side, a double triangle on one side, and a triangle and 
 trefoil on the other. Put a wreath under the soffit of the 
 chancel arch and a handsome coronal round the capitals from 
 
OF OHUKCHES. 
 
 G1 
 
 wMcli it springs. Put coronals round tlie nave capitals, and, if 
 possible, spiral wreaths round the piers — they will be found to 
 be the most effective of all the decorations. Put, at least, a 
 wreath round the margin of the Font and of the Pulpit. On 
 the outside of the south door put a wreath, either over the arch 
 by way of hood-moulding, or in a hollow moulding of the arch. 
 If you avoid flowers altogether, you will remove one great cause 
 of objection ; and a Church thus treated will look very pleasing, 
 and will give just offence to nobody. 
 
 Most decorators will content themselves with taking the 
 Church as they And it, and subordinating their decoration to its 
 principal architectural features ; but an architect, or an amateur 
 with competent knowledge, will not always be content with this ; 
 he will sometimes find it very possible to amend by his decoration 
 a faulty leading line, or to help a defective proportion, or to hide 
 an ugly feature, as well as to give a greater enrichment to parts 
 of the building. 
 
 In all the preceding remarks, we have had a Gothic building 
 in our mind’s eye as the subject of our decoration. A church 
 of Classical style will require treating on very different prin- 
 ciples. Festoons and fillets, which would be incongruous in the 
 one, will form the staple forms of decoration in the other. To 
 go minutely into the subject would be to write another whole 
 essay ; but any of the illustrated books on Classical architec- 
 ture or antiquities will furnish abundant suggestions to the 
 intelligent decorator ; e. g. Sir W. Cell’s Pompeiana,” or 
 Montfaucon’s Antiquite explique,” contain many representa- 
 tions of decorations of the interiors of houses, tombs, and 
 temples, and will supply all the hints for the general form 
 and arrangement of festoons, garlands, fillets, and the like, 
 which the decorator can require. Texts should be in Eoman 
 capitals, and be placed in rectangular panels. Many of the 
 wall devices which we have given will be as appropriate in a 
 Classical Basilica as in a Gothic Church. 
 
 We recommend that the pews and benches should be left un- 
 decorated ; but if it is desired to put some holly about them out 
 of respect to long-established custom and honest prejudices, let it 
 not be done with great straggling boughs, but with small hand- 
 some sprigs, all of about the same size. 
 
62 
 
 CHRISTMAS DECORATION 
 
 XVIL 
 
 m\)i Jl00r, 
 
 JHEN all tlie preceding directions sliall have been carried 
 I'j!) out, there will be nothing left undecorated but the roof 
 and the floor ; and a very zealous decorator need not let 
 even these escape. In most Churches indeed the roof will be too 
 high to be reached without more risk and trouble than it is 
 desirable to take for such a purpose. But in some small low 
 Churches it may be very desirable to put a text along the eastern- 
 most tie-beam, or to wreath a king-post, and hang festoons from 
 beam to beam. 
 
 On the FLOOR, especially within the altar rails, the old custom 
 of strewing with herbs and flowers may be retained, as it still 
 is at some of our civic festivals. For example, at the election of 
 sheriffs for the City of London for the year 1862, we read in the 
 newspaper report of the ceremony, that The dignitaries of the 
 corporation wore their civic robes and badges, and, following a 
 time-honoured usage, carried bouquets in their hands. The 
 hustings were also profusely strewn over with herbs and flowers.” 
 
OF CHUFOHFS. 
 
 63 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 CmidiistoH. 
 
 beg to offer one concluding suggestion on tbe making 
 f the Cliristmas decorations. Choose a large room, 
 ear the Church if possible, for the place of fabrica- 
 tion, and invite as many persons as possible to take a share in 
 the work. Every family which has a daughter engaged in the 
 work will have seen some of the devices made at home of an 
 evening, and heard of what greater things are going forward at 
 the Parsonage or the School-room ; brothers will have helped to 
 tie laths and hoops and to bend wire ; mothers will have given a 
 hand to the stitching and tying ; and fathers will at least have 
 looked on, over the newspaper ; and so the whole family will 
 have learned that nothing superstitious is involved, and no 
 mysteries are concealed, in the doing the usual Christmas 
 decorations with a little more care and taste than John Sexton 
 and Widow Pew-opener used to do them ; the whole family will 
 have been brought to take an interest in the work, and to under- 
 stand, and perhaps to enter into, the spirit of it. But, still more, 
 it will serve a useful moral purpose to associate as many as 
 possible in the work. One of the evils of our day is surely the 
 isolation of class from class — the want of friendly intercourse 
 even among good people of different classes. On the common 
 ground of the Parsonage dining-room or the National School- 
 room, you may bring together different ranks of your parishioners 
 and the pleasant bustle and confusion of the work will shake 
 them together, and make them more really intimate in a couple 
 of days than in a century of uncomfortable “^parties.” The 
 pleasure of seeing the work grow into beauty under their common 
 exertions will promote a cheerful sympathy among the workers ; 
 and a judicious Clergyman will find opportunities of throwing 
 out a word here and there to one and another which shall lead 
 them also to make a more careful preparation than usual of the 
 temple of their heart for the Christmas feast, and to enter more 
 earnestly into the spiritual joy and thankfulness of which tire 
 evergreens and flowers are the outward expression. 
 

 / 
 
 
 V 
 
 I 
 
 1 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 
 ON THE 
 
 (ffitstcr gtraratimv jf tfl]in:c|cs. 
 
 foregoing Essay on tEe Cliristmas Decoration of 
 C!linrclies liacl tlie good fortune to meet a general want, 
 and to meet it in a way wliicli tlie Clergy generally 
 were pleased to approve. From all parts of tlie country we liad 
 tlie satisfaction of liearing tliat tlie Essay influenced tlie Cliurcli 
 decorations. Togetlier witli tliese kind approvals of wliat liad 
 been done, we received many requests tliat we would add, by 
 way of Appendix, a few furtlier decorations and lielps ; and we 
 received other suggestions that we should increase the usefulness 
 of the Essay by extending its principles to the decoration of 
 Churches for several other occasions of general or local festival, 
 on which there is a growing feeling that this innocent and 
 beautiful custom might be adopted with advantage, and without 
 offence. It was in obedience to the wishes thus expressed that 
 we proceeded to give a few suggestions on the mode of decorating 
 Churches for Easter, for the School Feast, for the Harvest 
 Thanksgiving, and for the Confirmation, and on some partial 
 decoration on the occasion of a Marriage and a Baptism. Some 
 general additions, especially under the heading of Wall Devices 
 and Texts, will be found in the body of the Essay. 
 
 K 
 
EASTER DECORATION 
 
 {;6 
 
 I. 
 
 select Easter out of all tlie great Cliristian festivals, 
 for a discussion of its appropriate decorations, cliiefly 
 because tlie old custom of decorating for Easter lias 
 survived to tbis day in many Cliurclies, and lias been revived in 
 many others ; so that there actually exists a sufficiently general 
 custom to demand consideration, and provision for its observance 
 in the best manner possible. No doubt there is precisely the 
 same abstract reason for decorating God’s House on other great 
 days of observance. But unless such outward observance springs 
 out of the earnest feeling of the worshippers, it is no honour to 
 God, or delight or profit to man ; and if such outward observances 
 produce suspicion and ill-feeling among the worshippers, they 
 are, perhaps, more honoured in the breach than the observ- 
 ance.” 
 
 A moment’s recollection of the state of our gardens and 
 groves at Easter time will be sufficient to show the intending 
 decorator that we shall still have to depend upon the evergreens 
 for the bulk of our decorative material. In the deciduous trees 
 the rising sap is only then beginning to thicken the twigs and 
 swell the leaf -buds ; our gardens only yield the pale spring 
 flowers. These are tokens of the yearly miracle with which, 
 from the beginning, nature has preached to man the great 
 Easter news of a spring of new life after the winter of death. 
 But nature, in our cold clime, is behindhand with her tokens. 
 Before she has hung out her green banners from the wintry 
 trees, and covered the dark earth, in which last year’s flowers 
 were buried, with new blooms, the Easter season has arrived ; 
 and the Church has proclaimed, not in type and figure, but in 
 plain clear accents, the truth of that Great Resurrection in which 
 the resurrection of all things is included. 
 
 Evergreens must still therefore form the principal material 
 for our decorations and devices ; and the general plan of decora- 
 tion which we have described for Christmas will be also the 
 general plan for Easter — wreathed pillars and garlanded capitals ; 
 decorated arches, screens, reredoses, fonts, and pulpits ; and wall 
 
OF CHURCHES. 
 
 67 
 
 spaces filled witli devices and texts. Tlie Oliristmas liolly need 
 not be made so prominent, though we shall not be able to 
 dispense with it altogether ; especially as nothing else can supply 
 the place of the variegated holly in giving lightness and relief 
 to the more sober green. The general character of the Easter 
 decoration will therefore greatly resemble the Christmas decora- 
 tion; but there are two things peculiar to Easter which will tend 
 to produce a difference in its decorations. In the first place Easter 
 is the day of all the year on which it is appointed that every 
 adult Christian shall come up to commemorate the sacrifice and 
 death and resurrection of Christ in the Lord’s Supper ; it is the 
 one day in the year in which the whole Church is specially 
 required to hold communion with one another, and with the 
 common Head : the decorator will therefore be led to bestow 
 special care and elaboration upon that part of the Church to 
 which the congregation come up to receive the Holy Com- 
 munion. He will perhaps most easily secure this effect of special 
 elaboration in the chancel by diminishing the decorations of the 
 nave ; this he may do by merely, in the nave, garlanding the 
 capitals of the piers, and running a text under the wall-plate 
 of the roof or the string course of the clerestory, leaving piers 
 and arches and walls, and font and pulpit and desk, untouched. 
 The second thing peculiar to Easter, which will tend to influ- 
 ence its decorations, is, that it is the festival of the Eesurrection, 
 and that a flower is one of the most beautiful and appropriate 
 symbols of life — a beautiful, pure, and glorious life — springing 
 up out of death and the grave of the wintry earth. The 
 
 decorator will, therefore, desire to introduce — not the red holly 
 berries which give colour and cheerfulness to the winter 
 greenery, nor the dry and sapless everlastings with which he 
 was content at Christmas, when it is not the season of flowers ; 
 but when the fresh, beautiful, delicate spring flowers are 
 coming to life again under every hedgerow and in every garden- 
 bed, he will exercise a very strong prudential restraint upon his 
 good taste and poetical feeling, if he abstain from placing these 
 symbols of resurrection here and there and everywhere among 
 the decorations of Christ’s Banquetting House for His Resur- 
 rection Feast. 
 
 We have already given, in the frontispiece to the Essay, a 
 design for the general planning of the decorations of the east 
 end of a Church with one large east window. We now give a 
 design for an east end which has three lancet windows. The 
 design is of very elaborate character, and is intended to offer as 
 many suggestions as possible ; the decorator will take the whole 
 of it, or parts of it, or will modify it, according to his taste and 
 the means at his disposal. For example, he may take only the 
 
EASTER DECORATION 
 
 NO. XXI. EAST END WITH REREDOS, ETC. 
 
OF CHURCHES. 
 
 ()'J 
 
 text under the sill of the windows, and the triple canopy over 
 them, with or without the circles in the points of the gables ; or 
 he may omit the canopy, and take the lines of decoration in the 
 splays of the windows, continuing them round the arches if he 
 please. He may omit the wall diapering beside the windows, 
 and it will fiirnish him with a pattern for use elsewhere. He 
 may omit the reredos and dossal, or he may substitute for them 
 the design which we have before given in the Essay, or any other 
 of the many designs which a little ingenuity will enable him to 
 devise. After the detailed directions which we have already 
 given for fabricating all these kinds of decorations, w^e need do 
 
 NO. XXII. TEMPORARY SCREEN. 
 
 no more than give a few brief hints in explanation of the 
 drawing. The cruciform device over the altar is of flowers, 
 relieved by leaves, on a white ground ; the flowers of the cross 
 and its terminations may be white and red camellias or roses ; 
 the circle moy be a continuous line of yellow flowers, jonquils 
 for instance, relieved by an edging of green leaves. The com- 
 partments on each side of this are intended to be a red ground, 
 with a lattice of green leaves, and flowers at the intersections. 
 The remainder of the reredos is a framework of laths and circles 
 
70 
 
 EASTEE DECOEATION 
 
 covered witli green, as before described. The text may be of 
 green or red letters on a wliite ground. 
 
 In the Essay we gave a brief description of tbe kind of tempo- 
 rary chancel screen which might be erected on such an occasion 
 as this. We give on the preceding page a representation of such a 
 screen, of very simple construction, but of very excellent effect. 
 The framework consists simply of four vertical laths on each side 
 of the doorway, and two at the top right across the chancel arch, 
 four horizontal ones on each side to form the lower panels of the 
 screen, and fourteen others to form the simple gabled tracery. This 
 framework is covered with green, crocheted and finialed in the 
 way before described, up all the vertical lines, but not along the 
 horizontal lines. If flowers are used at all, the capitals and 
 finials and cresting, and the terminations of the cross, may be 
 
 >I< ALLELUIArTHE : LORD IS : RISEN ••• A LLELUIA^I< 
 
 NO. XXIII. EEEEDOS. 
 
 thus decorated. The circle in the gable of the doorway may be 
 formed of painted board or card, with the monogram done in 
 gold ; or the monogram may be cut out of card and fastened by 
 invisible wire within a circle of green. 
 
 Any of the religious symbols before described for Christmas 
 will be appropriate in wall designs for Easter. The specially 
 appropriate device for Easter is doubtless the cross, not plain, 
 not the cross of pain and shame, the accursed tree upon which 
 Jesus was crucified, but the cross as the instrument of redemp- 
 tion, as the weapon whereby the Son of Man triumphed over 
 death and the grave, as the honoured symbol of all that is true 
 and dear to us ; the cross bursting into leaf and blossom, like 
 
OF CHUBCHES. 
 
 71 
 
 Aaron’s typical rod wliich budded ; surrounded by a garland^ as 
 if the crown of thorns had turned into a festive garland, or as if, 
 in the same spirit in which the old painters put a nimbus round 
 the heads of sacred persons and the symbols of sacred things, we 
 on Easter morn had surrounded the sacred symbol with a nimbus 
 of flowers which are symbols of resurrection and of joy. Or, 
 lastly, the cross may be crowned, in token of His triumph over 
 it on Easter, who hung dead upon it on Good Friday. The 
 crown should be fastened by invisible wires at a little distance 
 over the cross. 
 
 Appropriate Easter texts will be gathered in abundance from 
 the services for the day. These are some of the most obvious : — - 
 
 ITorb h risen. ^Ueluia 1 pe is risen inbeek. 
 
 Christ is risen from tlje benb, tlje first frnits of tijem t^at steep. 
 0 beatlj, foljere is tijjr sting? ^ grahe, foljere is tijg fiietorg? 
 
 |f foe be beab foitb Christ, foe betiebe t^at foe s^all also tibe 
 foit^ pirn. 
 
 Jrom beneefortb blesseb are tlje beab foljie^ bie in t^e Jorb. 
 
 II. 
 
 Clje ^tW JjEist 
 
 not an appointed Church festival, but it is a local 
 tfflS occasion of religious and social importance. It is fast 
 taking the character which used to belong to the old 
 Village Feast ; when it is held, as it often is, on the Saint’s day 
 to whom the parish Church is dedicated, it becomes the legiti- 
 mate representative of the old local festival. In many parishes 
 it has all the good features of the old day of meiTy-making ; the 
 bells ring from early morning, and the parish makes a day’s 
 holiday ; there is a service in Church, to which the children 
 march in procession with a band playing and flags flying ; 
 Sunday-school teachers keep order along the line, and the clergy- 
 man in his gown and bands, supported by the school committee. 
 
72 
 
 SCHOOL FEAST DECORATION 
 
 his chief parishioners, brings up the rear. After service the 
 whole congregation adjourns to the booth in the vicarage field, 
 where the children are feasted with beef and pudding, or with 
 tea and plum-cake ; and the parishioners, high and low, all meet 
 together, and find themselves drawn into unaccustomed cordiality 
 over the vicar’s cup of tea or glass of wine. When the children 
 have finished their feast, they get to the old-fashioned rural 
 sports and games ; and their elders join for the sake of setting 
 the children a-going, and sometimes enjoy the sport as much as 
 if they were children themselves. And when the children are 
 getting tired, the young folks of a larger growth will get the 
 band to play them a country dance or — Iwrresco ref evens — a 
 polka, and will foot it with as hearty enjoyment, and more of 
 grace and good manners, and we doubt not with quite as much 
 innocence, as their predecessors 500 years ago danced round the 
 village maypole. We believe that an annual holiday of this kind 
 is productive of great good in a parish, and that it would be well 
 that the school feast should everywhere be sedulously cultivated 
 and expanded into such a general festival. And when the school- 
 room, or the booth, or the barn, in which the children have 
 their feast, is decorated for the occasion with boughs and flowers 
 and flags, we think it would be very desirable that the decora- 
 tions should be extended into the church, or we shall run the 
 risk of teaching the children by our practice that the service in 
 Church is the least important part of the day’s proceedings, not 
 worth taking pains about, or bestowing decoration upon. We do 
 not ask for much. On this occasion the chancel may be 
 comparatively neglected (unless the children’s seats are there, 
 and then it is the nave which may suffer comparative neglect) ; 
 put garlands round the pillars ; and decorate the font conspicu- 
 ously, to remind them that it is because they are baptised 
 children, the lambs of the Church’s flock, that all this fuss and 
 feasting is made over them. As the school flags are carried in 
 in procession, let them be placed against the pillars, slipped into 
 loops of wreath made on a foundation of strong twine, so that 
 they may stand out properly and show themselves. Two great 
 flags, looped up to their poles with a riband, or a loop of green, 
 may be placed at the sides of the chancel arch ; and all the 
 poles should be tipped with a bunch of green or a bouquet of 
 flowers. A text or two may be put up in conspicuous situa- 
 tions : 
 
 (Ifak IRJT 
 
 <Df sudj ts i\z lUiigbom af |j£nkir. 
 
 mito Ijim lliat offntbdb oitjc of tijesje flflh ones- 
 
OF CHURCHES. 
 
 Ptmte of Cbnst, rMIbwn of dlob, inheritors of tht JUnghom of 
 penhen. 
 
 Over against tlie Font : 
 
 buffer t^e Httk djilbr.cn to tome unto pe. 
 
 Over tlie cliildren : 
 
 Jke|i innotentjj, nnb Ijoib fast the tljing fohldj is right, for that shall 
 bring a man peace at the last- 
 Or, 
 
 S^lje fear nf the |Torb is tlje beginning of foisbom, 
 
 in full sight of the children. 
 
 III. 
 
 VERY general feeling has grown up of late years that 
 , we ought to have a general public thanksgiving after 
 harvest. This feeling has found fitting expression in the 
 Report of a Committee of Convocation, which has suggested this 
 as one of the occasions for which it is desirable that a special 
 service should be provided. Another Committee of Convocation, 
 appointed for that purpose, has already prepared a draft service 
 for the occasion ; and it is therefore probable that before very 
 long an annual Harvest Thanksgiving will be appointed by proper 
 authority, and a special service will be put forth for it. Already 
 in some parishes a beginning has been made. The cultivators of 
 the land have been induced, instead of giving their several 
 Harvest Homes after the old fashion, which was so often accom- 
 panied by excess, to join together in giving a general Harvest 
 Feast, not only to the labouring men, but to their wives also. 
 Usually, the first part of these better Harvest Homes has been 
 for all to go to God’s House to join in thankful worship of the 
 Giver of the Harvest : and in some cases the Church has been 
 appropriately decorated for the occasion. The Squire’s great 
 barn, in which the men dine in the afternoon, is always decked 
 with boughs and flags, and sometimes a great sheaf of the finest 
 
74 
 
 HARVEST THANKSGIVING DECORATION 
 
 white wheat is carefully made and tied up with ribands, and 
 placed in the middle of the table ; and if those who take so 
 much pains to grace the occasion really feel that for all the parish 
 to go to Church in the morning, to thank God with grateful 
 hearts for the common blessing, is as important a part of the 
 day’s proceedings as for the labourers to have their harvest 
 dinner in the afternoon, and for their wives to join them at 
 tea in the evening, they will hardly be satisfied to deck the 
 barn with boughs and flowers and corn, and to leave the Church 
 uncared for. 
 
 The Jewish Harvest customs were very beautiful and significant, 
 and the reading of them, in the 2 6th chapter of Deuteronomy, 
 and the 23rd of Leviticus might fittingly be appointed as the 
 First Lessons in our Harvest Thanksgiving service. 
 
 The ceremonial mentioned in the 23rd of Leviticus, vv. 10 to 15, 
 was performed before any one might begin his harvest, and was a 
 hallowing of the harvest performed on behalf of the whole nation. 
 It took place in the evening when the first day of the Passover 
 was ended and the second begun. Three men were deputed to 
 go and reap a sheaf of barley (as the first ripe of all the grains) 
 in the fields about Jerusalem, in the presence of a great number 
 of the people. The three deputies, having first obtained formal 
 leave of the owners, reaped each a handful with three different 
 sickles out of three different fields, and each man conveyed his 
 portion separately to the Porch of the Temple. There the three 
 handfuls were brought together into one sheaf, threshed, win- 
 nowed, parched, and bruised in a mortar ; that is to say, a 
 ceremonial imitative of the process by which corn is made into 
 food for men was solemnly enacted. Then, part of the corn 
 so prepared was sprinkled with oil, a handful of incense thrown 
 upon it, and it was cast into the fire upon the altar ; i. e., the 
 first-fruits of the whole harvest were thus offered up to God ; 
 after which every one was at liberty to reap and gather in his 
 harvest. Then, after the gathering in of the whole harvest each 
 man was required to go and offer of the first fruits of his own 
 field, vineyard, and orchard in token of gratitude to God the 
 Giver. Every Jew was to go up to Jerusalem, bearing a basket 
 filled with the produce of his land. We are told that the 
 ordinary baskets were of osier, but the rich bare their first- 
 fruits in baskets of silver and gold. At the bottom of the 
 basket was placed the barley, above that the wheat, then the 
 olives, above them the dates, next pomegranates, and at the top 
 figs, the grape bunches being hung outside ; and each kind 
 of fruit was separated from the rest by green leaves. The 
 men used to meet in the chief city of their tribe, and thence 
 march in large bodies up to Jerusalem, bearing their baskets 
 
OF CHURCHES. 
 
 75 
 
 on their shoulders. Arrived at the Temple, each man gave 
 his basket to the priest, who set it down before the altar ; 
 and the man stood before God, and said : A Syrian ready 
 
 to perish was my father, and he went down into Egypt and 
 sojourned there with a few, and became there a nation great, 
 mighty, and populous. And the Egyptians evil-entreated us 
 . and when we cried unto the Lord God of our fathers 
 He heard our voice . . . and brought us forth out of Egypt 
 
 with a mighty hand and a stretched-out arm . . . and He 
 
 _hath brought us into this place, and hath given us this land, 
 a land that floweth with milk and honey ; and now, behold, I 
 have brought the first-fruits of the land, which thou, 0 Lord, 
 hast given me.” And he was to worship before the Lord his 
 God, and rejoice in every good thing which the Lord his God 
 had given unto him ” (Dent. xxvi. 1-12). 
 
 This is the spirit in which we must offer up our Harvest 
 Thanksgiving; and our decorations of the Church for the service 
 must be inspired by, and must inspire, such a spirit. The fruits 
 of the earth should form the materials of our decoration, and we 
 must use them so as to express our thankfulness to God who 
 gives them, and, if it may be, so as to shadow forth some of the 
 deep spiritual truths which lie hidden beneath them. 
 
 The decorator of artistic feeling will 
 delight in the prospect thus opened up to 
 him. His eye will glisten as he but thinks of 
 the contrast between the green foliage and 
 the golden straw ; of the varied character 
 of the ears of wheat, and bearded barley, 
 and the graceful pendent oats, which he 
 may weave into his designs ; of the vine 
 leaves and the grape clusters which he may 
 use at such a time, and the bunches of 
 autumn fruits. To these materials, which 
 will suggest themselves, we will only add 
 oak leaves, as a symbol of all the forest 
 trees, and as a leaf which peculiarly har- 
 monises with the forms of architecture ; 
 and flowering grasses, many of which are 
 very beautiful, as symbols of the grass 
 for the cattle.” The wreaths for the piers 
 may be made of a band of plaited straw 
 about half an inch wide, ears of corn being 
 introduced at regular intervals. Either 
 ears of the different kinds of corn and 
 flowering grass may be introduced alternately in the same wreath? 
 or wheat exclusively in one wreath, barley (or bearded wheat) in 
 
76 
 
 HARVEST THANKSGIVING DECORATION 
 
 the next, oats in the next, and grass in the fourth. The effect of 
 the wreath will be very much heightened by the introduction of 
 green foliage, vine leaves, and oak twigs, and it may be made 
 still more gay by the introduction of flowers ; and perhaps the 
 whole wreath would be thrown up into more effective relief from 
 the pier if the straw-plait were bordered on each side by laurel 
 or oak leaves, which may be stitched on behind after the wreath 
 is made. 
 
 The capitals may be adorned with a garland of hop, vine, or 
 oak ; or a band of plaited straw may be fastened round above the 
 neck moulding, and into it may be stuck single leaves of oak or 
 vine, alternately with triplets of ears of corn ; or ears of corn 
 may be disposed in a fretwork round the lower part of the bell, 
 while the upper part is covered with leaves of vine ; or the lower 
 part of the bell with alternate oak leaves and ears of corn, the 
 upper part with aigrettes of oats. 
 
 NO. XXV. HARVEST REREDOS. 
 
 The wall devices may be of the same forms as those which 
 have been already described for Christmas ; only instead of being 
 made of two shades of green, they may be made of green leaves 
 and golden straw. The ornaments in the centre of the circles, 
 triangles, double triangles, &c., may be made of ears of corn, e. g. 
 a whorl formed of ears of bearded wheat, with a flower for the 
 centre ; or a miniature sheaf of corn. One or two great sheaves, 
 of the finest wheat produced in the parish, might be neatly made 
 and tied with a garland instead of m strawband, and placed 
 within the communion rails ; and afterwards given, together with 
 all the other corn used in the decorations, to some one or more 
 deserving poor people. 
 
 Among devices there are two of peculiar significance, which 
 may with great propriety be placed on the east wall of the chancel, 
 one a miniature wheatsheaf surrounded by a wreath of green leaves. 
 
OF CHURCHES. 
 
 77 
 
 and flowers ; and tlie other, a large bunch of grapes surrounded 
 by a wreath of vine leaves. Or, the two may be combined in one 
 device to be placed over the Communion table, by putting a 
 miniature wheatsheaf within a garland of vine. The symbolism 
 of these devices is sufficiently obvious : corn and wine are em- 
 blems as old as the world of all the good things which God has 
 given to sustain and refresh our bodies ; in the Lord’s Supper 
 they have this significance ; we offer them as tokens that we 
 receive all good things from God ; and he blesses and returns 
 them to be sacraments of the body and blood of Christ which 
 sustain and refresh our souls. No doubt, in the Thanksgiving 
 Service which is about to be put forth, there will be a special 
 collect, epistle, and gospel for the Communion service, and this 
 spiritual significance of the Harvest will be brought out in a 
 way which will elucidate to all the people the meaning of our 
 devices composed of wheat and vine. We give on p. 76 a design 
 for a harvest reredos, whose several parts will indicate to the 
 ingenious decorator the way in which many other parts of the 
 harvest decorations may be treated. On each side of the Com- 
 munion table are two upright laths, and two others in the angles 
 of the wall, fitted under the string-course, or screwed to the 
 horizontal laths which carry the texts across under the sill of the 
 east window. Five horizontal laths, or more according to the 
 height of the sill, are fastened to ' the vertical ones. These are 
 all covered with green, or with wheat-ears bordered with green. 
 The central compartment over the altar has two horizontal laths, 
 the upper one covered with green, the bottom one with oak leaves. 
 The triangular canopies may be made of plaited straw finialed 
 with flowers ; between the canopies may be hung clusters of grape 
 or bunches of other fruits ; within the canopies, standing upon 
 the lower lath, may be bunches or miniature sheaves of wheat. 
 
 Within the last few years the observance of the Harvest 
 Thanksgiving, and the decoration of the Church for the occasion, 
 have become so general that it bids fair to be, next to Christmas, 
 the most popular and best observed of our ecclesiastical festivals. 
 We give the following notes of special features in the decorations 
 or ceremonial, culled from newspaper reports and private com- 
 munications ; — 
 
 At St. George, Winkleigh, Devon, the Church was reopened, 
 after restoration, for the Harvest Festival, and the Church was 
 handsomely decorated. ^^For this purpose, every farmer of the 
 parish was asked to give a sheaf of corn for the decoration of the 
 Church, and what was not used for the purpose will be distributed 
 to the poor. The farmers were unanimous in complying with 
 the request, and many offered more than was asked for. The 
 day was kept as a general holiday, and several triumphal arches 
 
78 
 
 HAEVEST THANKSGIVINa DECOEATION 
 
 adorned tlie village. The Church was decorated with corn and 
 flowers, the thankofferings of the parishioners. Long lines of 
 ears of wheat swept round the arches of the aisles, with hop 
 flowers twining gracefully up the granite pillars ; from the font 
 through the aisles to the chancel gleamed the golden grain, 
 interspersed with flowers and mottoes.” 
 
 At All Saints, Lullingstone, Derbyshire, the parishioners went 
 to Church in procession, everyone carrying a beautiful bouquet 
 of geranium and wheat ears. On arriving at the churchyard 
 gate the band ceased playing ; the harvest hymn. No. 223 in 
 ‘ Hymns Ancient and Modern,’ was commenced, and so singing, 
 clergy, choir, and people entered the Church in order. Every- 
 thing spoke of harvest. On either side the porch rested a good 
 sheaf of wheat. Wheat sheaves, with bunches of grapes, were 
 laid upon the white-vested altar. Every standard in nave and 
 aisles bore its selected ears of corn. The flower wreaths, which 
 crept round the stalls and lectern, were interlaced with the 
 golden wheat ear. The font was surmounted with a canopy of 
 bowers terminating in a tall cross.” 
 
 At East Brent, a loaf of the new year’s corn was presented, and 
 used for the Holy Communion. 
 
 At St. John’s, Leicester, the wreaths round the capitals and 
 along the string courses were of plaited wheat, oats, barley, and 
 ivy, with red berries and red and blue flowers interspersed. In 
 the decoration of the pulpit and font evergreens, corn, scarlet 
 and blue flowers, ferns, and twigs of berberry were used, strung 
 together with the branches of red berberries hanging down, and 
 the effect is spoken of as being very successful. On the Com- 
 munion Table were laid a group of two sheaves of wheat, with 
 bunches of purple and white grapes, on a back ground of vine 
 leaves, between the sheaves ; and on the wall behind, encircling 
 an L g) of wheat ears, was a star of vine leaves, grapes, and 
 flowers, having the text I am the Bread of Life,” worked within 
 it in grains of wheat. 
 
 At South Newton, Wilts, the parishioners went to Church in 
 procession ; first banners and a band of music, then three men in 
 their smock-frocks, bearing sheaves of wheat, oats, and barley ; 
 then the Salisbury Plain Shepherds,” bearing their crooks, tied 
 round with locks of wort and ribands ; then the farmers, and then 
 the labourers, two and two. 
 
 At Paulton, Somerset, ‘‘Over the Churchyard gate was a pretty 
 and tasteful design of flowers, interspersed with corn and ever- 
 greens, flanked by two small sheaves of wheat; on either side 
 of the Church porch was a sheaf of corn, one of wheat the other 
 of barley. Several flags floated in the breeze from the ancient 
 tower, and during the day the bells rung merry peals.” 
 
OF CHURCHES. 
 
 79 
 
 Among tlie multitude of texts wliicli bear upon tlie subject, 
 our difficulty is to select tliose wliicli are most appropriate, Tlie 
 following are some of them. — For tlie nave : 
 
 l^oitoiu tijij ITorb foitlj S 0 sljall tljg hmx$ h 
 
 foitlj pknfg. 
 
 Mbile th wmHiRctlj sr;eb-time mtb Ijarbiest sl^all not cea$r. 
 fjz foob f 0 all far lji$ merrg rabarrflj far rkr. 
 
 pe malict^ pracr hr tljg barbrr$, aah fillrt^ tkr tohlj tijr flaar af 
 foijrat. 
 
 ^rai$r tljr ITark 0 mg ^aul, anb farget not all pb Imrrfit^. 
 
 For a long text under tlie wall-plate of tlie aisles, or the 
 stringcourse of the clerestory : 
 
 ^Ijoit bisiicst tijr €art^ aah hh^sr^t it. 
 
 pc briagctlr fartlj gras^ far fljc raffle, aab grmr l^crb far fk 
 ^erbice af mca ; airb faab a«f af flje earfb, anb kiirc f ^af makfb 
 glab fige Ijcarf af mair, airb breab fa ^frcngfljm mairb l^carf. 
 
 Sbljau l^asf gibcir airb preserkb fa aitr wse fijc luirblg fraifs af f^e 
 carflj, sa as iir bite frme b3c migl^f enjag fljcm. 
 
 ^eeli gc hrsf fk |viagbom af (toab aab pis rigljfcairsacss, airb 
 all fksc fljings sljall be abbeb lurfa goir. 
 
 If there is to be — as surely there always should be — a col- 
 lection for the poor or other good purpose : 
 
 Jfrcclg ge l^abe rercibcb, frcclg gibe. 
 
 Over the chancel-arch may be put : 
 
 ®lje earfb is fk J^arb's, aab fljc fahress fijerrof. 
 
 Over the Communion table : 
 
 I am flje brcab af life. 
 
 On the chancel walls : 
 
 Slaa s^all aof libc bg brcab alaar, baf bg eberg faorb af #ab. 
 
80 
 
 CONFIRMATION DECORATION 
 
 IV. 
 
 ^J^^ERHAPS tlie most deeply and generally interesting of the 
 rites of the Church is a Confirmation. Once in three 
 years the young men and maidens in the earliest bloom of 
 man and womanhood are brought from their parishes to the chief 
 Church of the district to meet their chief pastor, the representa- 
 tive to them of Christ’s Apostles, yea, in some sense the repre- 
 sentative of Christ himself. They have been carefully instructed 
 and trained (in properly-conducted parishes) for weeks before- 
 hand, and brought to look forward to and understand the life 
 upon which they are just entering. And they come to profess to 
 the Bishop in the presence of the Church that they deliberately 
 choose the service of God ; they come to enter publicly upon the 
 duties and responsibilities and privileges of the Christian life ; 
 they come to have the hands of the Bishop laid upon their 
 heads, for the only time in life, in fatherly blessing, and in 
 solemn invocation of the graces of Confirmation. It is a sight 
 full of interest to see them come in little flocks, each under 
 the guidance of its careful and anxious pastor, and take their 
 places, the girls in their neat white caps on the north side, the 
 boys on the south side of the nave ; while parents and sponsors 
 and friends throng the aisles, some to be spectators of the solemn 
 and imposing ceremony, some to offer up the prayers of full 
 hearts on their children’s behalf. It seems to us that, if there 
 is any occasion on which it is fitting to adorn the Church with 
 more than usual beauty, it is on such an occasion as this. 
 
 To what extent the decoration of the Church for a Confirma- 
 tion should be carried we leave to the taste and feeling of the 
 decorator ; the descriptions which we have already given for 
 Christmas and Easter will supply all that he needs. For our- 
 selves, we think that the decorations should not be on too 
 poor a scale. We should like to put an arch over the exterior 
 of the great doorway, with a garland of laurel tied with white 
 riband, over or suspended from, its apex. And we would gar- 
 land the capitals of the nave, and wreath the pillars of the 
 chancel besides ; and in the chancel decorations, if no scruples of 
 
OF CHURCHES. 
 
 81 
 
 prudence forbade, we would introduce the white flowers of the 
 season ; over the altar, or over the chancel arch, or over the east 
 window, we would put a cross with a crown over it, to symbolise 
 that the crown of immortality is our reward if we bear our cross 
 Christianly here — or, instead of cross and crown, a garland of 
 leaves and flowers to symbolise the glorious prize of the race for 
 which those young men and maidens are entering the lists of life. 
 
 The chief interest of the scene is concentrated at the altar 
 steps at which the catechumens kneel, and here, if it may be 
 devised, should be the climax of the decorations. This may be 
 done partly by not decorating the east end of the chancel, so that 
 the eye will not be attracted past the altar rail, and partly by 
 some decoration at the altar rail. For example, the space 
 between the rail and the step may be filled in with cancellation 
 in patterns of green, such as those which we have given for rere- 
 doses and wall diapers ; the rail itself may be measured off into 
 the several spaces allotted to the catechumens, and divided by 
 
 NO. XXVJ. DECORATION OF COMMUNION RAIL FOR CONFIRMATION. 
 
 bouquets of green and flowers. Again, a text, framed in green 
 leaves, may be carried on a framework of laths across the 
 chancel, at some ten or twelve feet high immediately above the 
 altar rail, so that the eye will be arrested at that line instead of 
 passing beyond to the east end. The text may be crested above 
 with sprigs of green heightened with flowers ; and. to make it 
 
 M 
 
82 
 
 CONFIRMATION DECORATION 
 
 still more elaborate and conspicuous, it may be cusped on the 
 under side with bent wire covered with green, with pendants 
 hanging from the points of the cusps ; make the arches formed 
 by these cusps just as wide as the spaces marked off on the altar 
 rail beneath, and they will have the effect of a canopy over- 
 hanging the heads of the kneeling catechumens. We give on 
 the preceding page a woodcut of this arrangement ; the two sides 
 of the altar-rail give alternative patterns of cancellation. Instead 
 of cusps of bent wire, nearly the same effect may be produced 
 by a straight-sided zig-zag of lath. 
 
 Among the appropriate texts we select the following : 
 
 son, gibr nu tijm 
 
 fear of tl^e |Torb is tlje beginning of foisbom- 
 Per toags are faags of pleasantness, anb all l^er pat^s are peace. 
 P[g grace is sufficient for t|ee. 
 
 Over the altar rail : 
 
 I loill be a <ifat^er nnto gon, anb ge sljall be mg sons anb 
 baug^ters, saitb tl^e |Torb g^lmig^tg. 
 
 (or if the whole text be too long, the latter clause of it only.) 
 Over the west ; 
 
 ^Ije brag of transgressors is ^arb. 
 
 And these from the Apocryphal book of Ecclesiasticus : 
 
 ^be fear of tlje |Torb is Ijononr, anb glorg, anb glabness, anb a 
 trobrn of rejoicing. 
 
 S^lje fear of tbe STorb maketlj a merrg l^eart, anb gibetlj jog, anb 
 glabness, anb a long life. 
 
OF CHUECHES. 
 
 83 
 
 V. 
 
 (ccasions of family religions festival 
 
 ! appropriate partial adornment in 
 tlie Cliurcli. When a rich man dies, his family are allowed to 
 put his pew in black, and sometimes the altar and pulpit and 
 reading-desk besides. In some country places, when a maiden 
 dies, a garland of white flowers (sometimes artificial flowers) is 
 laid on her coffin as she is borne to the grave, and is afterwards 
 hung up over her accustomed place in Church. 
 
 Wliy should people be allowed to bring their symbols of family 
 affliction into Church, and not the symbols of their family 
 rejoicings ? When the Squire’s or the Rector’s daughter is 
 married, the marriage procession walks in stately order from the 
 bride’s house to Church, and the village children strew flowers 
 along the path beneath the bride’s feet. Why do they cease 
 their strewings at the Church door, and not continue them all up 
 the aisle to the altar rails ? Is then the religion of the Gospel 
 consonant with affliction and melancholy, but must we check our 
 innocent mirth in its presence, and hide our human joys when 
 we come before God, as if we had cause to be ashamed of them, 
 or as if He did not sympathise with them ? God forbid ! Let 
 us, for God’s honour, fight against that lie of Satan’s inventing, 
 that religion is bitter and melancholy, and vice is charming and 
 gay ; let us make haste to take godliness out of mourning, and 
 put sin into it. No friend in the world more warmly sympathises 
 with all our innocent human joys than the good God and Father 
 who created us human and gave us joy ; there is nothing fitter 
 than to bring your symbols of love and hope and joy into Church, 
 when you come there to ask your heavenly Father’s blessing upon 
 the happiness which He has given. Scatter your flowers, then, 
 children, under the fair bride’s feet up to the very steps of the 
 altar. And if the friends of the bridegroom and the bride desire 
 to introduce further symbols of their joy into Church to grace 
 the marriage ceremony, we do not see why they should not be 
 allowed ; and we will offer them one suggestion in aid of their 
 
 desirable to permit those who are 
 
84 - 
 
 marriage DECORATION 
 
 good design. Erect a floral canopy over the place where the pair 
 will stand to receive the Church’s blessing. It need not be a 
 very elaborate erection. Two laths some eight or nine feet high 
 for uprights, and two others to form a steep gable from them, an 
 arch of two osiers, or two hazel wands out of the nearest copse, 
 and a hoop within the point of the gable, binding the gable and 
 the arch together, will form a framework ; cover this framework 
 with green, crocket the gable as before described, and terminate 
 it with a finial ; stick in white flowers here and there among the 
 green, and, if you like, hang a wreath of white flowers from the 
 apex of the arch, and fill in the circle in the gable point with a 
 monogram of the bride and bridegroom’s initials. If you wish to 
 make a more definite canopy of honour than this mere skeleton 
 and indication of one, erect a simple framework four or five feet 
 west of the first, and put gables at the sides also of the square 
 thus formed ; and from the tops of the four uprights carry four 
 laths to meet in the middle in a sort of spire ; crocket these laths 
 boldly, and carry the lines of green into a handsome finial, and 
 hang your garland from the centre of this spirelet. If you choose 
 to make this canopy moveable, and to let the groomsmen carry it 
 over the pair as they return through the Churchyard, and then 
 plant it at the bride’s door for the rest of the day, who will say 
 you nay ? If you choose to put a text under the sill of the east 
 window, or over the Communion rail, as in Confirmation, here is 
 a suitable one : 
 
 | 3 lease l^im hx bobg aith S0wl, anb fifre iogef^et hx l^olg l0fre tmfa 
 g0iu“ fifres’ eab. 
 
OF CHURCHES. 
 
 85 
 
 VI . 
 
 IVaptism. 
 
 ^^'^cQAIN, wlien a cliild is to be baptised, of parents who 
 appreciate the value and blessedness of the rite suffi- 
 ciently not to be satisfied with spending all their festive 
 preparation on the babj^’s cloak and hood, and the christening 
 dinner, it seems to us that they might ver}' fitting^ be allowed to 
 decorate the Font for the occasion. If the Font may be properly 
 decorated at Christmas, when it stands merely as a symbol of the 
 Sacrament, surely it may. with much greater propriety be deco- 
 rated when actually used in its administration of the Sacrament. 
 
 And should any one suggest that, by parity of reasoning, the 
 Lord’s Table may be with equal propriety adorned at the time 
 of the administration of the other Sacrament, we will only in 
 reply supply the suggester with an example — at the Church of 
 St. Augustine and St. Faith, London — where it is a custom of 
 immemorial antiquity^ to decorate the Lord’s Table with flowers 
 whenever the Lord’s Supper is administered. We have already 
 given sufficient directions for the general designing of the deco- 
 rations of a Font ; when it is decorated for a Baptism at a time 
 of year when flowers are to be obtained, it will be only natural 
 to use them in the decorations, and to choose especially those 
 whose colour will symbolise the purity from stain of original sin, 
 of which '-'the washing of regeneration” is the type and sacra- 
 ment. Over against the Font may be put the text, 
 
 .buffer tbr little tbilbrcn to tome unto pe. 
 
 * Intermitted for a time in later years, but now resumed. 
 
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LONDON : 
 
 PRLNTED BY JOHN GROCKTORD, 10 . WELLINGTON STREET, 
 
 STRAND. 
 

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