California Christmas : Holidays: Museum exhibit shows how European and Mexican traditions influence West Coast celebrations.

Where did the inspiration for “the Christmas spirit” and good will toward men and women come from?

A) The three wise men.

B) Passed down through the ages.

C) A Charles Dickens book.

If you chose C, you have a pretty good idea why Southern Californians celebrate the Christmas holiday the way they do.

A California Christmas, like the state, is a melting pot of traditions--an intertwining of things Victorian, Mexican and make-believe.

By citing three important decades in one family’s history during a holiday open house Saturday and next Sunday, the Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum will show how traditions from Europe, Mexico and even the Charles Dickens’ classic “A Christmas Carol” have influenced the way Californians celebrate Christmas today.

The “1920s Electrical Christmas” will highlight the 1840s, 1870s and 1920s--when William Workman and his grandson, Walter P. Temple, owned Rancho La Puente in the San Gabriel Valley.

“What we want to do with the open house is help people to see that the kind of Christmas we celebrate has changed dramatically--and only in the last 150 years,” says Max van Balgooy, director of education at the museum.

The Dickens book had a lot to do with defining the Victorian Christmas and for these “traditions” catching on here, Van Balgooy says. When the book was published in 1843, it “pulled together the ideas of decorating with greenery, giving to charity, a big dinner, gift giving” and, most importantly, he says, “being very generous.”

Though the focus of the open house is Christmas, “we’ll be talking about life in that time period” during tours of the home, says museum curator Carol Crilly. “We’ll talk about how the family lived there.”

The “Electrical Christmas” will take place in and around the restored La Casa Nueva, where thousands of electric lights will be strung around the lawn and gardens. Luminarias, an old Southwest tradition, will light the walkways to the adobe and La Casa. The interior will be decorated with lights, garlands, a Nativity scene and Christmas tree--as it was when the Temple family lived there in the 1920s, says Crilly.

“A lot of people enjoy the fun of the house at Christmastime,” Crilly says. “It really is festive.”

Before the turn of the century, New Year’s Day created more excitement in the United States than Christmas, says Crilly, “mainly because the Protestants in America didn’t want to celebrate a Catholic holiday.”

For Catholics in William Workman’s day--when Los Angeles’ population was about 2,000--the Christmas celebration was a one-day community affair. It began with a performance of the “Shepherd’s Play,” a re-enactment of angels announcing the birth of Jesus to shepherds in the field.

The play was followed by the Misa de Gallo (Mass of the Rooster)--which began at 4 a.m.--and was the forerunner of the modern-day midnight Mass, Van Balgooy says.

Christmastime at La Casa Nueva was an integrated affair with Hispanic and Anglo traditions, Crilly says (both Workman and Temple married Mexican women). Great-grandson Walter Temple Jr., who still lives in the area, recalls that the family ate tamales and flan--along with citrus fruits, salads and French salad dressings--at holiday meals.

For the “1920s Electrical Christmas,” the dining room table will be decked with holiday foods, including refrigerator cookies, spiced nut bread, coffee and apple cider. Visitors will get to sample these later. Poinsettias will provide a touch of Christmas color throughout the house--except in the bedrooms.

“Potted plants were thought to rob a room of oxygen, so they were never put in bedrooms,” Crilly says. The plants date to the 1850s as a Christmas decoration, and probably became a holiday fixture, Crilly says, because they bloom in Mexico in wintertime.

The open house is an event Walter Temple would have appreciated, says Van Balgooy, because he built the house with entertaining in mind. “Temple loved to have visitors; even when he wasn’t here they were welcome.”

Visitors to the open house can participate in old-time activities such as popcorn stringing and snowflake cutting.

“It’s a real family event,” Van Balgooy says. “It’s exciting to see grandparents telling their grandchildren about how they used to do this.”

Electric lights will cover La Casa’s Christmas tree, just as they did in the Temple household. In the 1800s, candles were attached to trees and lit “and that was it,” Crilly says. The flames were extinguished almost immediately to “avoid burning the place down.”

Electric lights were invented around 1910, Crilly says, when a telephone equipment repairman used leftover switchboard wire and made a string of lights.

Another Mexican tradition that showed up in early holiday celebrations was the pinata. Mainly for children, the tradition re-emphasizes that celebrating Christmas in the 1800s was primarily for youngsters.

It wasn’t until the 1870s that the idea to give gifts--mainly for children--began to catch on, and that, says Van Balgooy, was only because merchants began to advertise it.

The railroad made its way into the valley in 1876, and by the 1880s and ‘90s, new Christmas “traditions” from Europe were introduced: Christmas trees came from Germany; the Dutch introduced Santa Claus, and Christmas cards, greenery and gift-giving came from England.

By 1923, residents enthusiastic about the holiday were eager to deck the halls with holly--and got a bit carried away.

“People from all over L.A. started driving up to the foothills and clipping away all the natural undergrowth,” Van Balgooy says. “They gathered their own pine, laurel and toyon berries. They were scalping the hillside.”

A conservation effort ensued, but to avoid looking like humbugs, people used artificial trees and centerpieces.

“There are a lot of these things we do today that were done before,” Crilly adds. In fact, with the advent of artificial “greenery,” commercialism and gift-giving, a 1920s Christmas more resembled the “traditions” practiced today than those from the 1870s, Crilly and Van Balgooy agree.

“Our Christmas is very modern,” Van Balgooy says. “I doubt that George Washington would recognize the kind of Christmas we have today. He wouldn’t even know what a Christmas tree is.”

Workman and Temple Family Homestead Museum, 15415 E. Don Julian Road, City of Industry. Reservations for the open house are strongly recommended: admission $2, students and seniors $1, children younger than 5 free. La Casa Nueva will be decorated for the holidays through Jan. 5. Tues.-Fri. 1-4 p.m.; Sat.-Sun. 10 a.m.-4 p.m. (818) 968-8492.