Christmas past

A thread to view Christmas from Victorian times to the present.
Decade by Decade.

 

While we rightly associate many Christmas customs with Victorian times, it was a festival that the poor could rarely afford to partake. They might save a little from their wages to pay for a Christmas goose or beef, but an agricultural labourer earning 5/- (25p) a week could never afford to save anything.

 

In 1834 things got even worse for the very poor with the introduction of the Poor Law Act, which rationalized the running of the workhouses, but also created such a harsh regime so that no one would want to enter a workhouse, except as the last resort.

The new Poor Law Commissioners ordered that no extra food was to be given out at Christmas. In reality, the Guardians, who ran the workhouses, took a more humane view. The Times newspaper published a regular review of how the inmates were treated at Christmas in the workhouses around London, which included Brentford, for the years from 1840 to 1870, and found that a proper Christmas dinner was given in almost all the workhouses. The Richmond Herald in December 1896, in an article on Christmas in the Richmond workhouse, noted that the inmates received two hundredweight of beef (about 91 kilograms) and the same amount of plum pudding on Christmas Day.

While the workhouse was for the very poor, many families were on the bread line. Charles Dickens’ Christmas Carol might actually typify some attitudes towards the poor at Christmas time in early Victorian England. Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol in 1843, which tells the story of an old miser Scrooge, whose only Christmas ’gift’ to his overworked, underpaid clerk, Bob Crachit, was to give him Christmas Day off with pay, which he considered “a poor excuse for picking a man’s pocket every 25th of December!”

The book was very popular and encouraged many well-to-do people to give money and gifts to the poor at Christmas. The tradition of giving money gifts to the poor at this time of year was a much older custom, but it really took off in Victorian times.

The boxes were given on Boxing Day, which earned its name as the day that servants and working people were given these boxes of money. Another change for the better was the new railways, which allowed people who had moved into the towns and cities in search of work to return home for a family Christmas. The railway companies offered special cheap rates over Christmas both in the national and local press, including the local Richmond papers.

 

The Victorians may not have invented Christmas, but they certainly introduced and revived many of the traditional elements we celebrate during the festive season today. Before the Victorian period, Christmas celebrations were muted affairs, with many of the working classes limited to just one day off. When Queen Victoria married Albert, however, the family became the heart of the Christmas period again, and the royals led by example.


Many traditions celebrated in Germany were popularized by Prince Albert, including the Christmas tree. After The Illustrated London News published an image of the royal family making merry around a tree, everyone wanted one, and so the tradition was born. Gift-giving had traditionally been observed at New Year but, as the importance of Christmas increased, gifts began to be given on Christmas Day, with shop-bought presents starting to replace homemade gifts.

Did you know…?
Astonishing as it may seem given the highly flammable nature of resin-rich Christmas trees, before electricity they were illuminated with candles. Great care was, of course, needed to stop the candle set fire to the tree, particularly as the tree dried out over the festive season. It was for this reason that branches above the candle had to be carefully trimmed back. The candles were usually mounted on holders that had a dish of thin foil to catch any hot wax before it dripped and caused problems.

It is widely thought that the Protestant reformer Martin Luther was the first to add a lit candle to a Christmas tree is around 1525. The candle was lit on Christmas Day itself to symbolize Christ’s arrival as the ‘Light of the World’, a phrase used by Christ to describe himself in the Gospel of St Matthew.

Candles were expensive objects at the time, so the candle on a tree remained the preserve of wealthier German Protestants for many years. It was not until the mid-19th century that cheaper candles and greater wealth combined to make a candle on the tree a standard part of the festive season for middle-class families. By the 1860s it was usual to have more than one candle, with some trees having a dozen or more lit on Christmas Day.

The first use of electric lights instead of candles came in 1882 as part of a marketing publicity stunt by the Edison Electric Light Company in New York. The cost of electric light bulbs meant that these fairy lights did not become popular until the 1930s when prices came down. In the 21st century, LEDs have replaced light bulbs on Christmas trees.

 

Right, That's the Turkey plucked and stuffed......................................................All we gotta do now is kill it!!!

 

As the focus of Christmas began to shift to family and children, the role played by Father Christmas also changed. The jolly fellow had previously been associated with adult celebrations, but now he became the bringer of gifts and added a magical element to the holiday. The singing of Christmas carols was also revived and the custom of kissing under the mistletoe – which possibly had pagan roots – became an acceptable way of stealing a Christmas kiss. Meanwhile, the reform of the postal system and introduction of the Penny Black stamp in 1840 – making it easier to keep in touch with friends and relations – helped launch the tradition of the Christmas card, the first of which appeared in 1843.

The Christmas card revolution began with reforms with the postal service. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)


Roast turkey remains the customary fare for Christmas lunch and we can thank the Victorians for this, too. In the early 19th century, turkeys would have been too expensive for the majority of households to afford. But the development of the railway made them more accessible and affordable, and soon they had become the star attraction at Christmas dinner tables. The inclusion of a roast turkey at the end of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, also helped cement this meaty tradition.

 

I thought it was a goose. lol

 

Victorian Christmas Crackers
Another commercial Christmas industry was borne by Victorians in 1848 when a British confectioner, Tom Smith, invented a bold new way to sell sweets. Inspired by a trip to Paris where he saw bonbons – sugared almonds wrapped in twists of paper – he came up with the idea of the Christmas cracker: a simple package filled with sweets that snapped when pulled apart. The sweets were replaced by small gifts and paper hats in the late Victorian period, and remain in this form as an essential part of a modern Christmas.