Wartime Christmas tree: How WWI soldiers would have decorated

It's a tree decorated the way lonesome soldiers overseas missing home might have done it during the First World War — "simple and austere." 

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The Christmas tree, decorated with handmade paper chains and snowflakes, stars cut from tin cans and reproductions of vintage postcards from the era, are part of an exhibit commemorating the 100th anniversary of the war at Eptek Art and Culture Centre in Summerside, P.E.I. 

You can't put a money value on sentiment and emotion. And you make with what you have.— Claude Arsenault

"I started to think about the idea of what would soldiers in World War I have at their disposal?" said Claude Arsenault, a supporter of the Eptek Centre and an enthusiastic collector of vintage Christmas decor who lives in Birch Hill, P.E.I. 

'Make something of nothing'

"They would have foil from cigarettes, they would have paper, they would have cotton batting from first aid rooms, they would have string, they would have pencils," he said, as well patriotic government-issued postcards. 

"Playing cards are another thing that would be available to soldiers," said Arsenault. "I cut them all up and we just hung them on the Christmas tree to make something of nothing, and that was the whole idea." 

While there is evidence that soliders celebrated Christmas, there is no record of what kind of decorations they made during the First World War, so Arsenault came up with them from his imagination. 

Where can I get supplies?

Stressing he is not an historian, Arsenault calls the tree a fantasy of what might have taken place.

"I was trying to be there in that moment, I was trying to be a soldier in World War I, missing home, with a job to do. Where can I get supplies?" he said.

"It made me feel that however humble, Christmas is Christmas," he said. "You can't put a money value on sentiment and emotion. And you make with what you have."

Converted 'Scrooge'

Arsenault belongs to a Facebook group called The Golden Glow of Christmas Past, a global group of Christmas lovers who collect pre-1976 vintage holiday decor. 

"I had rejected Christmas for many years," he shared. But a just few years ago, the retiree was converted after house-sitting for friends who are enthusiastic about celebrating Christmas.

"I realized I had been shortchanging myself for many years. Really what it is all about is caring and love and kindness and sweetness and all of those things … Christmas is love, period." 

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