Victorian Christmas at the Bradley Home

Thanks to the decorative efforts of many volunteers and the brilliant leadership of the Midland County Historical Society and Midland Center for the Arts, many Midlanders experienced a Victorian Christmas at the Bradley Home's Alight a Night. In addition to the usual Christian festivities of Christmas, Nativity scene, etc., the Bradley Home Christmas display signifies a middle class stability in Midland which gave our town its historic and contemporary bourgeois character. My readers may remember Titanic expert Floyd Andrick, who volunteered as our polite butler. I welcomed guests into the Receiving Parlor, while an associate Jake Huss opened up the Formal Parlor (Drawing Room) with Midland Symphony Orchestra cellist Linda Murray playing Christmas music on her original cello from the 1720s. Carolers, blacksmiths, and other ladies and gentlemen brought the house to life. Here is the Midland Daily News article, and below is a generalized rendering of my informal oral introduction to the house and family:


"Come into the Parlor, and welcome to another Bradley Home Christmas! It is now one hundred and thirty eight years since the construction of this house in 1874, and since then there have been many wonderful Christmases here. By 1916, Midland was known as the "city of homes," and this home was the best one of all because it was tied to the very essence of Midland itself. On this wall, we have featured John and Amanda Larkin. John founded the city of Midland when he set up a logging mill here for the logging industry. Midland is potentially important to loggers because three rivers intersect here (the Chippewa, Tittabawassee, and Pine), and rivers are the highways for loggers. They float their logs down these rivers and at intersections they will pull them up and have them cut. So John is here ready for them when that happens.

Their daughter, May Larkin meets an adventurous young man by the name of Benjamin Bradley. Now Benjamin moves up to Midland in 1866, after searving in the Civil War [dear readers, please forgive my nomenclature. In Midland, it is "safe" to call it the Civil War, though I should certainly have called it the War Between the States in a general setting] and going on a gold rush in Colorado. So he's a very adventurous and risky man, but he falls in love with May Larkin. They get married in 1869, and in 1870, they have their one and only daughter B. May (B. stands for "Baby," sort of like a "Jr."). By 1874, because Benjamin has married into a very notible Midland family, he begins construction on this home to show a sense of stability and wealth for the community. His own fortunes fluxuate a lot (he's very risky and invests in the Mexican Silver Expedition, not a good idea), but he always has to display an aura, or expession, or feeling of stability.

You can just imagine what Christmas would have looked like. It would have been a time to show off the home. So what we have here is all the Christmases that the Bradley family might have celebrated combined into one. Christmas decorating would have started in July, with drying out some of the greenery to be set up later. The family gathered in the room around, what one American author Washington Irving called, "the paternal hearth, that rallying-place of the affections, there to grow young and loving again among the endearing mementoes of childhood." The Christmas Tree would have been lit only on Christmas Eve with real candles, and maybe a bucket of sand nearby just in case of a fire. Before rapping paper became popular, they hid surprises in the tree. Maybe a trumpet... or Grandpa John gets a new walking stick [pull gifts from tree]. B. May was very fortunate for her era, and would have revived gifts like a rocking horse and a doll [show expensive gifts]. And then there was the games. Here is the most fantastic game of all, Spider Web [made from a web of ribbons suspended on the chandelier and ceiling]. You find your tag, follow your ribbon with your eyes all the way around the room... it changes colors and altitude... until you find a gift tied at the end... This game is the bean game. You dig in [a bowl with a silver spoon] and you have one chance to get something [candy]...

[If visitors stay longer] The restoration of this home began in 1969. The priests [of Saint Bridget's Catholic Church] used it as a rectory from the 1910s to 1969. It was falling apart and the church wanted rid of it. A Delta political science professor saw it and thought what a great opportunity to restore some local Midland history. The Midland County Historical Society acquired it, and we moved it out here in December 1969 (we had to cut several power cables to get it here). Then in 1970, the real work of restoration began..."

Merry Christmas