A Celebration of a Victorian Christmas While the Victorians did not actually invent Christmas,
They did turn it into a celebration all of their own.
Crystallising the bright and cosy images we have today of mistletoe bowers,
Roving carolers beneath gaslights at midnight,
And spectacular feasts of goose and turkey.
In this,
The first of my Christmas tracks,
We will be looking at accounts from diaries,
Novels,
Poems,
Letters,
That the Victorians themselves used to describe their cheerful festivities,
And we will be carried along in all their preparations for the holidays,
Shopping through 19th century London,
Decorating the hearth and the tree,
Drawing up elaborate dinner menus,
And then,
With Christmas Day itself,
Playing games in the parlour,
Singing songs,
Listening to music,
Pantomimes and plays,
For the whole family.
This is a nostalgic trip into times gone past.
Happy listening.
At no time in the year can we see the Victorians being so utterly Victorian as they were at Christmas.
Separated into little flambly knots around the hearth,
The table or the piano,
They followed the progress of their own dear Queen as she,
Wife and mother in the bosom of her family,
Sets the perfect example of how Christmas should be,
Which fed into the Victorian notion of Romanticism.
The following readings are from articles published at that time.
George R.
Symmes,
1885.
A mighty magician has touched London with his wand.
The spirit of altruism has descended upon the city itself.
The note of preparation for the great festival of the Christian Church,
Which was sounded early in November,
When the windows of the stationers,
The booksellers' shops,
The booksellers' shops and the railway stalls became suddenly gay with the coloured plates of Christmas numbers innumerable as increased in volume as time went on.
Now,
On the eve of the great day,
There's not a street in the capital containing a shop from its broadest thoroughfare to its narrowest byway that has not decked its windows for the Christmas market.
Ladies' Field Magazine,
December,
1898.
Our illustrations will furnish some idea of the charms of the Yuletide gifts at Mrs.
Dickinson Jones's,
And further must be noted the charming assortment of Olympia glass and the blue and white Dresden ware.
Of the latter,
The candlesticks are particularly desirable.
Of the latter,
The candlesticks are particularly desirable.
And there are some charmingly shaped dishes which might equally well be adopted for use or ornamentation.
In fact,
So numerous are the gifts at Hanover House,
It would be far too colossal a task to chronicle their merits at length.
Far better it is to advise our readers to make a personal inspection without delay,
Or where distance does not admit of this,
Mrs.
Dickinson Jones's catalogue of Christmas presents should be at once sent for.
We can answer for it that the only difficulty will be to limit one's purchases so fascinating are all the goods illustrated therein.
For those considering making gifts at home,
Castle's Household Guide was an invaluable repository of self-help advice.
Many pretty,
Fancy articles can be made from scraps of ribbon or silk and satin,
It said,
With the addition of pins,
Beads and spangles.
Paper spangles are the kind to be used in the articles now described and can be bought in penny packets at toy shops.
Red and gold bright spangles are wanted and a few old playing or writing cards.
And then it goes on to detail in description how to make a mandolin,
A Turkish slipper or a fish pin cushion.
For children then as now,
Christmas was a time for sweets and toys and although both could and were bought in vast quantities,
The former were often made at home.
For girls there were dolls,
Dolls to dress and dolls to play with,
Dutch dolls,
Dolls with porcelain heads and fabric or leather-covered bodies.
Many came with whole wardrobes and outfits for every activity and of course there were dolls' houses.
Some were simple playthings,
Some were simple toys,
Of course there were dolls' houses.
Some were simple playthings but many were perfect architectural miniatures of actual houses complete from foot scraper to chimney.
No doubt Victorian parents derived as much pleasure from some toys as their children did.
For boys the choice was wider still.
Victorian mechanical ingenuity had produced working models in miniature of almost everything a child might experience in the real world outside of the nursery.
There were trains and boats,
Carriages and coaches,
There were toy soldiers and forts to put them in,
Toy firemen and fire engines for them to drive and of course there were games,
Games of chance and skill from snakes and ladders to hats.
There were happy families.
The market for toys was enormous and the huge number of toy museums all over the world bear witness to the vast and varied number of playthings with which our ancestors regaled their offspring on Christmas Day.
As for Christmas decoration,
It was not invented by the Victorians but it was a custom which they enriched with their own inventiveness and enthusiasm.
Castle's household guide provided detailed instructions from Christmas decorations of the home which are just as applicable today.
The materials to be used includes all kinds of evergreens,
Everlasting flowers and coloured and gilt papers.
No Christmas would be thought complete if they did not hang in the hall or dining room a bunch of mistletoe with its curiously forked branches with a terminal pairs of nerveless pale green leaves and white crystalline berries.
Holly is of course the special tree of the season.
Its leaves bent into various curves,
Its thorny points and its bunches of coral red berries make it the prince of evergreens.
Let it be conspicuous throughout the decorations.
It is a good plan to strip off the berries and use them strung in bunches as the berries get hidden when the sprigs are worked into wreaths and devices and the berries bent into little bunches dotted about the festoons here and there look very effective.
Ivy must be introduced with care.
Small single leaves come in with good effect in small devices or to relieve a background of sombre hue or arbor vitae.
The young shoots of the common ivy are best or of the kind which grows up trees and old walls which are very dark and glossy with a network of light coloured veins.
Laurel is a very useful green in sprays and the single leaves may be applied with excellent effect in wreaths or overlapping one another in borders.
The variated Ancuba makes a pleasing variety in the colour.
Hues and arbor vitae are useful especially the small sprays of them for covering the framework of devices.
Myrtle and box are also pretty in narrow borderings into which coloured everlasting flowers may be introduced.
The black bunches of ivy berries may sometimes be used with advantage to give points of contrast in the decorations.
Of course,
If chrysanthemums,
Christmas roses,
Primulas and camellias can be obtained the general effect is heightened and the decoration becomes more elaborate and more elegant.
The best wreaths for decorating the banisters of a house or any pedestals,
Pillars or columns are those made in a rope of evergreen sprigs.
And if there is a lamp in the dining room supported by chains holly wreaths twisted round the chains may look very well.
While a chaplet round the base and a small basket filled with mistletoe suspended from the centre of the base can look very effective.
Borders of evergreens may be placed along the back of the sideboard and if there be a mirror in it a small chaplet in the centre and seeming to join the borders looks very pretty.
Pictures and mirrors can be framed with made-up borders of evergreens.
Where these are square borders arranged in the shape of Oxford frames look very pretty.
If the entrance hall be in panels narrow borderings of box and ivy look well laid on all around and in the centre half loops or chaplets or a monogram.
Scrolls with mottos bidding people to be welcome and happy either laid on bright coloured calicos with holly borderings or else merely the word Christmas done in laurel leaves are very effective.
And even in the bedrooms the frames of pictures and mirrors can be edged with wreaths.
Prince Albert was the one to introduce the idea of Christmas trees.
And the fashion really caught on.
The German Christmas tree quickly became established as the centrepiece of all seasonal decoration.
The brightness of the little candles and the excitement of the children who waited around it to claim their presents were here described by Charles Dickens.
I have been looking on this evening at a merry company of children assembled round that pretty German toy a Christmas tree.
The tree was planted in the middle of a great round table and towered high above their heads.
It was brilliantly lighted by a multitude of little tapers and everywhere sparkled and glittered with bright objects.
There were the rosy checked dolls hiding beneath the green leaves and there were real watches with moveable hands and an endless capacity of being wound up dangling from innumerable twigs.
There were French polished tables chairs,
Bedsteads,
Wardrobes 8D clocks and various other articles of domestic furniture wonderfully made in tin at Wolverhampton perched upon the boughs as if in preparation for some fairy housekeeping.
There were jolly broad-faced little men much more agreeable in appearance than many real men and no wonder for their heads took off and showed them to be full of sugar plums.
There were fiddles and drums tambourines,
Books work boxes paint boxes sweetmeat boxes peepshow boxes and all kinds of boxes.
There were trinkets for the older girls far brighter than any grown-up golden jewels.
There were baskets and pincushions in all devices guns,
Swords and banners witches standing in enchanted rings of pasteball to tell fortunes.
There were tea totems humming tops needle cases pen wipers smelling bottles conversation cards bouquet holders real fruit made artificially dazzling with gold leaf imitation apples pears and walnuts crammed with surprises.
In short as a pretty child before me delightedly whispered to another pretty child her bosom friend there was everything and more.
This motley collection of old objects clustering on the tree like magic fruit and flashing back the bright looks directed towards it from every side some of the diamond items some of the diamond eyes admiring it were hardly on a level with a table and a few were languishing in timid wonder on the bosoms of pretty mothers aunts and nurses made it a lively realisation of the fancies of childhood but of course just as some Victorian Christmases were extravagant and wildly ornamental Louisa M Alcott's Little Women set a shining example to those who needed prompting the fate of the poor.
Not far away from here lies a poor woman with a little newborn baby said Mrs Marsh six children are huddled in one bed to keep from freezing for they've no fire there's nothing to eat over there and the oldest boy came to tell me they were suffering hunger and cold my girls will you give them your breakfast as a Christmas present?
They were all unusually hungry having waited nearly an hour and for a minute or two no one could speak then Jo exclaimed impetuously I'm so glad you came before we began may I go and help carry the things to the poor little children asked Beth eagerly I shall take the cream in the muffins added Amy heroically giving up the article she most liked Meg was already covering the buckwheats and piling the bread into one big plate I thought you'd do it said Mrs Marsh smiling as if satisfied you shall all go and help me and when we come back we will have bread and milk for breakfast and make it up at dinner time and so we can see Christmas looks different to very many people but whichever way we celebrate it and wherever we're celebrating it from I wish you all a very merry Christmas and a happy and peaceful New Year
