Holiday Doors: The Story of a Fruit Fan on South Street

When the Gregg family put up a display of fruit above their front door for the holidays a few years ago, it piqued a lot of interest. At one point, in fact, a group of teenage boys rang the doorbell to ask about the "fruit fan."

The Gregg fruit fan is an array of lemons, apples, oranges and greens surrounding a pineapple, a Colonial sign of hospitality.

"If you lived in Williamsburg or Beacon Hill, you would see one of these fruit fans," said Rob and Ginny Gregg of 52 South Street.

But what has come to be known as the "Colonial Williamsburg fruit fan" did not actually originate in Virginia, according to History.org which says,

• The custom of affixing fruits, vegetables, dried flowers, herbs, and other plant life to basic Christmas forms like wreaths, swags, and roping traces its roots to the early years of the 20th century. 

• It was thought that the fruit fan originated in Colonial Williamsburg in the 1700s, however, no one in the 18th century would have been caught dead with real fruit tacked to his front door. Anyone hanging fresh fruit outdoors in the middle of winter to rot or be devoured by squirrels would have been thought, at best, highly eccentric by his neighbors.

• The linking of fruited wreaths with Christmas and front doors seems to have started during the early years of the 20th century in America's wealthier homes. To judge by the home and garden decorating magazines of the day, Christmas greenery of any sort on doorways was rare. Only the toney publications, loaded with advertisements for grand pianos, Packards, sterling silver tea services, and seven-week cruises, show photographs of homes with holiday trimmings--and even these are few and far between. It was left to Colonial Williamsburg to popularize this sort of decoration with the country's expanding and prosperous postwar middle class.