Cabinet of Curiosities – Christmas Family Trees

As most people know, Christmas trees were first introduced into the UK in the nineteenth century, influenced by the habits of the royal family, although using greenery to decorate our houses at winter festivals has been a tradition for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.

But, fascinating though a general history of Christmas traditions would be, that’s not why I’ve chosen my Christmas tree as my first entry into the History Girls’ bulging Cabinet of Curiosities. No, I’ve chosen it because, visiting friends and family, seeing all of their trees and putting up my own has reminded me that every home and every family has its own history – and these can often be traced through the branches of its Christmas tree.

So I thought I’d take you on a quick journey around my own family tree, sparkly nuts and all.

Christmas in my parents’ home has always been about our family and our traditions, built up over the years – and still is. That’s why my mum still hangs out the sequin-encrusted stockings that were first my dad and uncle’s, 60 years ago, and were then mine and my brother’s a mere 30 years’ back.

The tree at my mum and dad’s also always has certain things on it, no matter what. This year, my mum’s tree was decorated entirely in red: except, that is, my Yellow Glitter Bell (created age 7ish, maybe?) and My Brother’s Sparkly Nuts (made when he was about 2). I never did understand why the adults sniggered when we cried ‘its Matthew’s nuts!’ as they came out of the box each year...

As an adult, my own tree can’t compete with such precious and time-honoured relics, but I have developed some traditions of my own. There are the baubles two of my closest friends gave as wedding favours from their December marriage, having brought back 160 of them from China; the 7 or 8 freebie ‘fat Robins’ that my local independent garden centre gives away each year when you buy your tree from them rather than the big chain store just down the road; or the cheapo Woollies angel who is a remnant from my first student house.

There are other memories on my Christmas tree, too, of places I have been, with people I love: the wooden reindeer from an amazing holiday in the Arctic Circle; a tiny nativity scene inside a bell, brought back from the moving pilgrimage route of the Camino de Santiago, or the bauble painted with scenes from the Tuscan countryside, reminding me of wine-tasting and walking with my mum this summer, fulfilling one of her ‘bucket list’ dreams.

To me, that’s what a Christmas tree should be about: not just a sparkly, oversized ornament which drops bits of itself all over your carpet, but a series of reminders of the people, places and things you love, evolving year by year, each new decoration a precious memory as well as a thing of beauty in its own right. 

I hope you all had a very merry Christmas and have a happy, healthy and prosperous new year. But do me a favour: when it comes to take the decorations down, be sure to pack them away carefully. They aren’t just baubles, but celebrations.

Climbing the Family Tree by Mary Hoffman

This one's a beaut, isn't it? It shows the ancestors of Sigmund Christoph, Graf von Zeil und Trauchburg.  I've been thinking a lot about family trees since an email conversation with our November guest Sarah Gristwood. I had mildly criticised the one in her excellent book, Blood Sisters,  for the Houses of York and Lancaster. Sarah was in complete agreement, having been compelled to make simplifications by the book's designer.

The scales fell from my eyes at that point. Ever since seeing the RSC's magnificent Histories Cycle - twice - a few years ago, I have been fascinated by Plantagenet history and no book I have read on the subject since has had an adequate family tree. I have been compiling my own composite genealogical chart on a large roll of paper and I can see why designers might ask for simplification!

Miniature, Jacques de Besançon, Paris, c.1485. Showing 43 generations.

Family trees have been popular ever since this representation of the Jesse Tree, representing the descent of Christ. That's a pretty ambitious project; not even my Plantagenet one aims at 43 generations!

But if you think about it, no family tree can include everything, or it would end up containing everyone in the world. So where do you stop? Confucius's genealogy, initially represented as a fan, was said to have two million people on it. The update has 1.2 million living descendants! Not even the longest roll of lining-paper would cope with that.

Genealogy is a fast-growing hobby in the UK for people who want to research their family history; in our family, it's my older sister who has the bug. She sends me bulletins from the genealogical research front, with titbits about obscure relatives from generations back, complicated by the fact that in our parents' families there was a marked tendency to call people by names other than their given ones.

The resources for such seekers after  facts - the chroniclers and archivists to be found in many families - are so much easier to gain access to in the Internet age. My sister uses the UK censuses up to 1911 and they have yielded much information. There are many books published to help and the success of UK television shows such as Who do you Think you are? has swelled the numbers of people joined Societies which share resources. There is even genealogy software to help generate family trees. And websites like Family Search and the BBC's Family History

When our youngest daughter brought home the man who was to become her life partner, she lent us the DVD of a TV show that used him as a subject to discover links to distinguished ancestors, such as the Duke of Wellington, the man who helped win the Battle of Bosworth field for Henry Tudor and - the clincher - King Arthur!So that's a new use of family trees - a sort of Debrett's to impress potential in-laws.

When I write my own novels, I always make family trees. Sometimes they end up published in the final books, as in the di Chimici genealogy above, for the Stravaganza sequence.  This one takes you up only to 1578 though the most recent book, City of Swords (2012) has added - and subtracted - some names. That's what writers of fiction do after all: bring people into existence and sometimes kill them.

But even when they aren't published, I need my family trees. How can you write about any characters without knowing how they fit in that web of relationships? How can you get the ages right? And how can you climb about confidently in the branches of your story without a strong tree to support you?