Each year, the Museum’s National Historic Landmark, the 1885 Ballantine House, offers visitors a taste of how Christmas was celebrated in late Victorian Newark, as English, German and Dutch holiday traditions merged into something not so very different from the way the holiday is celebrated in America today.

This historically accurate installation offers the opportunity to step back in time to learn about nineteenth-century life and traditions. From the Christmas tree (a German tradition) to the wooden shoes by the hearth (a Dutch tradition) to the stockings on the chimney and plum pudding in the dining room (English traditions), visitors can get a sense of how Christmas evolved into a home-based secular holiday in the nineteenth century, linked to but distinct from the religious commemoration that was celebrated in church.

During the six-week period starting right after Thanksgiving up until early January, the festive atmosphere in the Ballantine House is resplendent with authentic Victorian decorations and evergreens that were popular during the period.  Peek at a lavish "open house" tea, held on Christmas Eve in 1891, featuring a Christmas tree decorated with the Museum's collection of Victorian ornaments.  See the family's stockings hung by the fireplace in the library, an image popularized in the 1822 children's book, A Visit from St. Nicholas (otherwise known as The Night Before Christmas). Storybook panels in the rooms also allow visitors to “eavesdrop” on the servants as they discuss their own holiday plans and talk about the variety of guests expected to attend the Open House.  Observe a Christmas dinner set for the family in the ornate mahogany-paneled dining room, complete with party favors and a splendid banquet inspired by Victorian cookbooks.  Recipes for some of these dishes will be available to take home.

The blocks surrounding the Ballantine mansion were home to Newark residents of a wide range of cultural backgrounds and economic status—a microcosm of the city itself.  Part of Museum’s complex for over seventy years, the restored 1885 Ballantine House also offers two floors of period rooms and decorative arts galleries and is open to the public year-round.

Banner image (detail): Close up of the Christmas setting of the Ballantine dining room at Christmas, 1891.


Above (top to bottom):

Ballantine House parlor decorated for Christmas.

The Yuletide Carolers, by: Nadkine Raphael, Westfield, NJ