Christmas Decorating and a Giveaway!

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I just released my first Christmas book this year. Mrs. Pettigrew’s Christmas Match. And of course, you can’t write a Christmas story set in 1882 without doing a little research. Mrs. Pettigrew is a rich (make that very rich) widow and famous matchmaker. She’s throwing a small Christmas ball. The first social gathering she’s hosted since her husband died two years earlier. She’s hired a new maid, a young woman down on her luck who needs a job desperately to survive. And wouldn’t you know, there’s a handsome young man that lives three houses down who should be in want of a wife! It’s all the encouragement Mrs. Pettigrew needs to do a little warm-up before getting back into the matchmaking game. She does this by making the pair spend as much time together as she can manage by sending them off on errands together. But she never lets her “new maid” put on a maid’s uniform, and insinuates she’s a houseguest, not an employee. This puts our heroine in a pickle, and she can’t seem to find the opportunity to tell Mrs. Pettigrew’s handsome neighbor she’s just a servant. At least she gets to enjoy decorating Mrs. Pettigrew’s house and preparing for the ball! Now if she could just get a chance to tell our hero what she really is, she can same them both a lot of embarrassment. Mrs. Pettigrew sees to it she never gets the chance. Good thing I didn’t set the story back as far as the 1830s. There wasn’t a whole lot of decorating going on.

You see, Christmas back then wasn’t quite what it is now. The fact Christmas didn’t really start to flourish until the 1870’s says a lot. In fact, around 1830, most folks back east didn’t “do Christmas.” Hardly anyone decorated the inside of their home, and no one had a Christmas tree. If anyone did decorate, those decorations were sparse.

As time went on, and the idea of Christmas became more popular, more and more people began to celebrate it, complete with decorations and a tree. By the time 1856 rolled around, the state of Massachusetts made it a legal holiday and there were folks hanging up stockings, hoping Santa would come fill then. And when an illustration of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert sitting at a table with a Christmas tree on it began circulating, it grew even more popular.

Then, on December 25, 1870, President Ulysses S. Grant made it a legal holiday for federal employees. Yet there were still many that didn’t celebrate it and so used the holiday to catch up on chores.

If you had money, you could afford ornaments from Germany. In fact, there are ornaments from the 1870’s that are reflected in ornaments today. And there are things like holly, pine, boxwood, ferns, and fir. They were used back in the day to decorate and still are. We love hanging fir boughs  on the curtain rods around the house and will string Christmas lights through them. The house always smells so good when we do that. 

And of course, it’s always nice to have a live tree, but not everyone can due to allergies or other factors. But myself, I do like decorating with some greenery here and there. We don’t go crazy, but  have fun setting out the family nativity scene, which is ancient, and other Christmas items that have been in the family for decades.

What are your favorite things to decorate your house with? Are you modest with your decorations, or do you go all out? I’m giving away one free e-book of Mrs. Pettigrew’s Christmas Match to one lucky commentor!

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USA Today bestselling author Kit Morgan is the author of over 140 books of historical and contemporary western romance! Her stories are fun, sweet stories full of love, laughter, and just a little bit of mayhem! Kit creates her stories in her little log cabin in the woods in the Pacific Northwest. An avid reader and knitter, when not writing, she can be found with either a book or a pair of knitting needles in her hands! Oh, and the occasional smidge of chocolate!

49 thoughts on “Christmas Decorating and a Giveaway!”

  1. I have 2 faux trees. I go all out decorating for Christmas on the first floor. Especially love our collection of hand-carved Santas by my late FIL.

  2. Hey Kit! Oh man, I’m a humbug when it comes to a Christmas tree! It just isn’t my thing to do much decorating inside at Christmas. But, outside? I love it! I put lights out on my hedges and decorate my front porch. Right now my grandson loves colored lights! So, it’s all colored lights outside. My husband usually helps me. I try to have them out before Thanksgiving and turn them on Thanksgiving night.

    Best wishes Kit!

  3. I love decorating with evergreens that have a Christmasy smell and are accented with bright decorations. I used to do a lot, but I’m doing less now than I used to. I love the decorating but don’t enjoy putting it up after Christmas.

  4. There I just something about Christmas time that brings joy to my soul. It’s a time to celebrate the birth of our Savior. It’s a time of family and friends gathering and people seem just a bit more kind to each other. I have a whole closet filled with my decorations, some from my childhood, some from my husband’s childhood and some we have bought together. Each year everyone gets a new ornament and as we decorate the tree we remember years past as we put up each special ornament. After 3 kids, 6 grandchildren and 30 years of marriage- we have quite the collection of interesting stories/ornaments to talk about and remember.

  5. I enjoy decorating but I do not do as much as I used to as my husband is becoming a Grinch in his older years.

  7. Christmas was always a big “thing” when I was growing up. My Grandma, Dad’s mom, went all out decorating with treasures that had been brought over from Austria/Germany. She baked nonstop from right after Thanksgiving up to Christmas with recipes handed down for generations. I inherited the decorations that adorned her house and tree but rarely use the tree ornaments as they are now well over 125 years old! Some of my favorite recipes for the holidays came from her. Now, I put up a tree, decorate the house with some of her “treasures”, hang a wreath by the door and bake many of her Christmas recipes. These are my ways of bringing back great memories of Christmas past.

  8. My decorating depends on how much energy I have. Some years more than others. I decorate with garland, a small wood sleigh, pinecones, nativity set, and a hallmark musical. Of course the tree. I have a 7 ft tree that has so many ornaments on it that there is only about 2 inches between any. I also have momentoes of loved family members that have died.

  9. Your book sounds delightful! Christmas is my favorite holiday, so I go all out with the decorations. I have special ones inherited from my grandparents, given to me by my mom, and purchased by my husband and myself. But I’m also a crafter and I love to make fun new things to put out every year.

    • Oh, those darn cats! I had that problem for years. One year we bought a bunch of cheap plastic and non-glass ornaments so we wouldn’t lose anymore of the good ones.

  12. My mom passed away in 2020 so I have several of her decorations now….one of my favorites is the cardboard Nativity scene that she set out each year and she would put these two white lamp stands with blue bulbs in them on either side of it. And this year my aunt, my mom’s last living sibling gave me her Annalee mice and several nutcrackers that I plan to use.

  13. My Daughter has already started decorating for Christmas! She goes all out and has a huge house to put it all in the right places!

  15. We have a small Christmas Tree and a Nativity Scene set up beside our tree on a table. We also have some Thomas Kinkaide Christmas lanterns that we will be putting up this year for the first time.

  16. I haven’t decorated in quite a few years, but last year I was really excited to find a small lighted ceramic tree, a miniature version of the one my grandma used to have, at a thrift store last year. I’ll definitely be putting it out this year!

  17. I like a nativity scene and a small tree. Not as much as I used to since both my mom and twin sister are in heaven.

  18. I just put up a very small tree and maybe something on the door. Sometime my husband will put out lighted deer in the front yard. That is about it.

  19. I put up a slim white Christmas tree in my living room and a small fiber optic tree in our loft where we sit in the evenings. The fiber optic is probably twenty-one years old but still looks great. I decorate my mantel, my kitchen hutch and touches in my kitchen. I also have wreaths on the doors. We gave our nativity scene to our son to display for our granddaughters. Some years my husband puts up an outside lit snowman and candy canes for our granddaughters. I hope your Christmas season is Blessed!
    I love the cover of your book and it sounds like something I would really enjoy reading.

    • We had a little fiber optics tree a couple of years ago as there was a lot going on and no time for dealing with a bigger tree. It worked great and was also about twenty years old!

  21. Hi , I love Christmas so our Christmas tree always has alot of ornaments and I do decorate around the house. Your book sounds like a Great read! (not entering this ebook giveaway as I am not tech savvy and I dont read ebooks at all, but Thank you) Have a great rest of the day and a great week.

  22. We have a New England Christmas village that we set up right after Thanksgiving. We do some decorating but don’t go all out. And, lights outside on the house and then luminarias outside on Christmas Eve.

    • We’ve never really put lights on the house, Molly as we’re out in the middle of nowhere and there’s no one to see it. Maybe one of these years we will.

  23. I have a tree loaded with ornaments, a nativity plus various items around the house. Christmas is my favorite holiday. Thanks for the chance to win a prize.

  24. I like to put up a Nutcracker tree and a Christmas tree both fake since there are allergies to pine in my family also I like to put Nativity sets up including an Irish Nativity set plus ceramic Santa’s not to mention Irish and English decorations even have a Santa that stands waist high
    Christmas is my favorite holiday because my Birthday ? is exactly one week before Christmas plus I just love celebrating Jesus’ Birthday ?

  25. Kudos to Mrs. Pettigrew for setting up her “servant” for her Happily Ever After. I love a good Cinderella story.
    I used to go all out for decorating at Christmas, but don’t seem to quite get there anymore. There have been several years when we haven’t been home for Christmas. In those cases, I usually have a one foot tall tree I bring with us and decorate with items I find where we are visiting.
    The most special decoration we have is our first nativity set. Five weeks after we were married, my husband who was in B-52’s, was shipped to Guam for the Vietnam War. I joined him for Thanksgiving and flew home 10 days before Christmas when he was due back home. He didn’t get home until January because the night I left was the night the war kicked into the final phase with the bombing of Hanoi. While there, we got a little Hummel nativity set. The figures remind me of It’s A Small World at Disney. I have collected a few more since, but that first one is the most important and means so much to me.

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