News

Just like olden times

By Joanne Flemming
Compass Correspondent

Ornaments made for an exhibit at Appleton's Hearthstone Historic House Museum provided diocesan school children with lessons in the meaning and history of Christmas.

Christine Cross, the museum's executive director, said students from four Catholic schools, a religious education program and a home school made ornaments for the five trees in the exhibit: "Parade of Ornaments: A Victorian Christmas." Hearthstone is a late 19th century house. The exhibit will end Jan. 16.

Appleton area businesses and families sponsored the project. Hearthstone provided materials for and background information on 10 different kinds of ornaments and invited schools to make them.

Lois Bresset, religious education director at St. Rose Parish, Clintonville, responded and said she was looking for ornaments with a religious theme. Her first through fifth graders made 40 little baskets from paper and glued stickers and glitter on them.

In Victorian times, such baskets were filled with candy and fruit before being hung on Christmas trees. This idea fit with the giving theme St. Rose students were learning, Bresset said, and with their Easter project of making gift baskets for the elderly.

The cornucopias second graders at Holy Spirit School, Kimberly, made tied into their social studies lesson, "Christmas Around the World." Teacher Denise Umlauft said the English filled these ornaments with candy just as the Germans filled stockings.

The children made two styles of cornucopias: 20 with flaps and 20 without. "They enjoyed two days making these things," Umlauft said.

When the second graders asked why they couldn't just buy ornaments, Umlauft turned her answer into a history lesson. She explained that there were few, if any, stores 100 or 125 years ago that sold Christmas decorations. The wealthy could order them from catalogs; common people had to make them.

For fourth graders at St. Mary School, Menasha, the 18 "dresdens" they made prepared them for a trip they made on Dec. 3 to Heritage Hill in Green Bay, said teacher Nicole Brandt. The children toured the state park's historic Christmas exhibit as part of their unit on Wisconsin history.

Brandt said the "dresdens" were silver and gold foil ornaments embossed with candy canes, holly, poinsettias, stockings and other Christmas symbols.

Marion Look, fourth and fifth grade teacher at St. Edward School, Mackville, said the 16 Santas her students made were a history lesson in "how people used to do it."

The children glued Santa heads and felt onto cardboard, then decorated the robes with sequins and ribbons.

The ornaments were art projects for fifth graders at Most Precious Blood School, New London, and Sherwood area home schoolers.

Cathie Curns, fifth grade teacher at Most Precious Blood, said students painted and assembled 18 "jumping jacks," figures with hinged arms and legs. When a string was pulled on the back of the ornament, the arms and legs moved.

Cheryl Warrens of Sacred Heart-St. John Parish, Sherwood, said 15 to 20 home schooled children made white felt angels and painted plaster ornaments.

Most classes will visit Hearthstone before the exhibit closes to see their ornaments on the trees. Signs by each tree indicate who made the decorations.

When the exhibit ends, the museum will return the ornaments to the children. Umlauft plans to fill the cornucopias with candy before giving them to her second graders.

Hearthstone is open Tuesday through Friday for guided tours, beginning at 10 a.m. The last one starts at 3:30 p.m. The museum is open 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Sundays for self-guided tours.

Admission is $5, adults; $3, children; children under 7, free.

For information on the exhibit and tours, call Cross at (920)730-8204.