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“Can Christmas angels have brown skin?”
Sophia, then seven, asked her mother Natalie Duvall that question while decorating their Christmas tree in 2018.
She looked around at her fairies, angels and Santa Clauses with their white skin tones and realized the answer – yes – was not an obvious answer for her daughter, who could not see herself presenting herself in the faces placed on and around the tree. her house.
It inspired Ms Duvall and Alison Burton to create Britain’s first collection of ethnically diverse Christmas decorations – angels, choristers and wise men with textured hair and black and brown skin.
Ms Duvall told Sky News: “An angel can have any kind of skin, whether it’s brown, pink or red.
“What an angel is is your interpretation.
“And it was really sad for me that my daughter thought they were just one color.
“They were just white.
“And that’s not the world I want my daughter to grow up in — that there’s only one version or something.”
Decorations aren’t just an accompaniment to Christmas festivities—they can also prompt difficult conversations.
Ms Burton said decorating can be for everyone, not just black and brown-skinned people for whom representation is important.
She added: “I think some people find it difficult to have conversations about race and colour.
“But the introductions you make in your home, whether it’s the books you read, the movies you watch with your kids, or the different decorations you put on your tree, help facilitate conversations about race and make it normal. helps to create. To make them not feel like a novelty.”
Alison Burton and Natalie Duvall
Decorations featuring people of color exist overseas, but are a new concept for UK audiences.
They are designed by the founders, then packed and shipped from a warehouse in Kent.
The company, March Muse, is in its fourth year and creations are common in the Duvall and Burton houses.
“It was special to see my daughter’s face light up when she saw this angel that looked just like her,” Mrs. Duvall said.
“She was like, ‘Oh, she’s brown. She looks like me’.”
“It’s a small way to show her that she’s represented in this world, and that she belongs in this world.
“Now when we show him the new designs of our angels he says ‘I’ve seen them 100 times mum, what’s new?’.
“What we want is a reaction, we want it to be normal and not innovation.”
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