Tag Archives: traditions

Recreating A Victorian Christmas: It’s Not As Difficult As You Think By Eve Pearce

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539770-bigthumbnailA winter festival has been celebrated since pagan times but it wasn’t until the Victorian era (1837-1901) that traditions that are associated with Christmas really took off and the season began to resemble modern-day Christmas.
You may have thought that Christmas cards, Christmas crackers, turkey dinner with too much punch and opulent toy store displays were symbols of the commercialism that comes with today’s festive season, but they actually had their origins in Victorian times.

Christmas Cards

The Christmas card was born in 1843 when wealthy business man, Henry Cole, hired an artist to design a card for Christmas.  The artist drew a family around the dining table and it contained a festive message.  The cards were sold for an impressive one shilling each, putting them out of the reach of most ordinary people.  The expense meant that children were encouraged to make their own, before mass printing techniques in the 1880’s brought the price down.

To make your own Victorian Christmas cards, just follow these simple steps:
1 Create lace effect paper using strips of ordinary plain paper and cut out a scalloped edge.  You can do this via a template or draw your own.
2. Place a folded cloth under your paper to protect your table and then use a pin to make lots of tiny holes in your paper – this will give it the appearance of lace.  If children are making the cards, please ensure you supervise them.
3. Stick your ‘lace’ paper along the edge of a piece of white card.
4. Stick a Victorian picture onto the front of your card – or if you want to have a go at recycling you could use pictures from last year’s cards or cut them out from leftover Victoriana gift wrap.  Examples of the types of illustrations that adorned Victorian cards can be found from an original collection at the Library of Birmingham.
If you are unsure, you can also watch an instructional video by the BBC.

Christmas Crackers

In 1847, a confectioner called Tom Smith was looking for a new and inventive way to sell sweets with a bang.  He had discovered the sugared almond ‘bon bon’ in France and wanted to make it more popular with his customers in Britain, so he began by wrapping the bon bons in paper tissue with a love moto. The idea for the cracker was inspired by the sound of a log crackling in the fireplace. Tom thought that to combine the wrapped sweets and motto with a crackle would make them more appealing for Christmas.  He experimented with chemical compounds until he found one that made a bang when the paper was torn. The iconic cracker had arrived.

You can make your own crackers:
1. Take the cardboard inners of three small toilet rolls and measure out some tissue paper the same length as the cardboard rolls.
2.  Place double sided tape along one edge of the tissue paper, roll up the toilet rolls and stick down.
3. Roll up a second sheet of paper tissue that is slightly shorter than the first sheet.
4. Tie a ribbon at the neck of your cracker and remove the end toilet roll, then place a cracker snap inside, with double sided tape at both ends to secure it to the tied end of the cracker.
5. Place sugared almonds and a love motto in your cracker and tie up the remaining open end with another ribbon, sticking down the second piece of tape on your snap.
6. You can decorate your crackers with bows, pieces of fabric or Victoriana images.

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Turkey Dinner

Turkey was the meat of choice for upper class Victorians on Christmas day and it gradually replaced the more traditional choices of beef and goose, until by the start of the 20th century, it became the most popular seasonal dish.  You could opt for goose if you want to try something both traditional and different.
Charles Dickens described a Christmas dinner of roast goose with sage and onions, gravy, mashed potatoes and apple sauce in his famous novel, ‘A Christmas Carol’. It’s really easy for you to have the same.

1. Preheat your oven to the temperature suggested for your goose.
2. Remove giblets and excess fat from the cavity – you can use this fat to spread over the goose to enhance the cooking.
3. Stuff the neck cavity with sage and onions – slice your own onions to add to the mix as this tastes far more superior than packet sage and onion.
4. Pierce the skin with a fork, add a small amount of salt and pepper and rub butter into it. Place on foil on a meat tin in the center of the oven.  You will need around 2 hours, 45 minutes of cooking time for a 4.5kg goose.
5. Transfer to a serving dish and leave to stand for 20 minutes before you carve as this will retain more of the flavors.
6. Add home made mashed potatoes with butter and a spoonful of apple sauce.

 Christmas Trees

Pagans used to decorate fir trees in their winter festivals but the traditional of the Christmas tree began when Prince Albert got one for Queen Victoria. The Illustrated London News published a drawing in 1848 of the prince and Queen and all their children surrounding an elaborate Christmas tree decorated with candles, home made decorations and sweets. After seeing the drawing, the public followed suit.
You can go traditional by choosing a real Christmas tree and decorating it with handmade paper ornaments and sweets you can hang from the branches. If you want to go all out, you could even try real candles.

1. Get clip candle holders so you can safely attach your real candle to your tree
2. Don’t place any other decorations above your real candles
3. Always light your candles from those at the top of the tree down, so you don’t accidentally set fire to your clothes
4. Make sure you count the number of candles you place on your tree and what position they are in
5. Have candle snuffs and a fire extinguisher in case of an emergency
6. Only have your candles lit for short periods of time and never leave your candles unattended
7. For a safer option, you could use LED tea lights in your clip on candle holder – while not strictly Victorian, LED’s are a no flame light.

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Christmas Presents

Macy’s Department store in New York was one of the first to create a Christmas toy display in their window in 1897, the first time themed displays had been tried.  However, as toys were handmade they were expensive and out of the reach of most parents so the average Victorian child received a stocking containing fruit, nuts and if they were lucky, sweets.  You could try this by choosing a traditional knitted stocking (or knitting your own) and adding fruit and nut selections and some sugared bon bon’s.  You might want to include some back up presents too and diffuse any Christmas drama.

Hatching Chicks Deviled Eggs

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I am always amazed at simple and creative ideas I run across and this is one of them. Simply make your deviled eggs a little different and make them into little chicks hatching. Such a simple a creative idea that your children can help make. Don’t think of this as an Easter idea either, I’m sure a few laughs would come to the dinner table when your family and friends see these and if your child helps, it makes them feel special and incorporated into the dinner as well.

Victorian Chrstmas Greeting Card History

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Children in Victorian England had the task of writing greetings to their parents in their very best handwriting. Sometimes adults wrote Christmas letters to each other, but this could take up a great deal of time. The printed Christmas card solved the problem. The custom of sending printed cards was started in England by Henry Cole, who did not have time to write letters to each of his relatives. He asked an artist, John Calcott Horsley, to design a card for him. About 1,000 of these cards were printed, and those not used by Sir Henry were sold by the printer for one shilling. This was not cheap, which may be why they did not sell very well. With the introduction of the “penny post” in 1840, it became cheaper to send mail, and as a result of color printing and the invention of printing machines, cards could be printed faster and cheaper. The first company to print and sell Christmas cards on a large scale was Charles Goodall & Sons of London in 1862. The first charity card was produced in 1949 by UNICEF. Richard H. Pease, a printer from Albany, New York, is credited with sending the first specially printed Christmas card in America, in 1851. It managed to make the first mistake in Christmas card history. The card showed a building on which was hung a banner proclaiming “Pease’s Great Variety Store.”

A Brief History Victorian “Cracker”

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The first illustration of a Christmas cracker appeared in The Illustrated London News in 1847, but there is some argument as to who invented them. Two London sweet makers, Tom Smith, and James Hovell, both claim to have invented the cracker. In 1840s Paris, sweets called “bon-bons” were wrapped in twists of brightly colored paper. Tom Smith (or James Hovell) brought back the idea but added a little slip of paper with a message on it, called “kiss mottoes.” Later, other attractions were added, such as little paper hats, tokens and small toys, plus the “crack.” It is said that Tom (or James) was sitting in front of his Christmas fire where the yule logs were crackling, which gave him the idea of putting a cracker strip inside his bon-bons. The crackers were also made to look like tiny yule logs, as they still do today.

A Victorian Christmas Tree History

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Behind the double doors of the Victorian parlor stood the Christmas tree, an old German custom the Victorians enlarged upon both in style and decoration. This tradition had come to England by way of Queen Victoria’s great-great-grandfather King George I.

When she was Queen, Victoria had a Christmas tree at Windsor Castle. In 1848, an etching of Victoria, Albert, and their children gathered acround their decorated tree was published in The Illustrated London News. At about the same time, Charles Minnegerode, a German professor at the College of William and Mary, trimmed a small evergreen to delight the children at the St. George Tucker House. Martha Vandergrift, aged 95, recalled the grand occasion, and her story appeared in the Richmond News Leader on December 25, 1928. Presumably Mrs. Vandergrift remembered the tree and who decorated it more clearly than she did the date. The newspaper gave 1845 as the time, three years after Minnegerode’s arrival in Williamsburg. Perhaps the first Christmas tree cheered the Tucker household as early as 1842.

As a result, Christmas trees became the popular fashion in England and the central feature of the Victorian family Christmas. German settlers had brought the custom to America, but when the same illustration of Victoria and her family appeared in Goody’s Lady’s Book in 1850, Christmas trees became even more popular in American then in England.

What made the Victorian Christmas tree so special was its elaborate decoration. Decorations included gingerbread men, marzipan candies, hard candies, cookies, fruit, cotton-batting Santas, paper fans, tin soldiers, whistles, wind-up toys, pine cones, dried fruits, nuts, berries, and trinkets of all kinds. Paper cornucopias filled with nuts, candies, and other treats were the Victorian favorite. It was not uncommon to find some small homemade gifts, such as tiny hand-stitched dolls or children’s mittens, and freshly baked treats like sugar cookies. Hand-dipped candles were placed carefully on each of the branches. A Christmas doll or angel could usually be found adorning the top of the tree.

Children often helped to make the tree decorations. They would string garlands of popcorn or cranberries, or make chains of paper flowers. Some families set up a Nativity or outdoor scene under the tree, using moss for grass and mirrors for ponds.

Later in the century imported ornaments from Germany began to replace the homemade ones. First came glass icicles and hand-blown glass globes called kugels. Dresdens, which were embossed silver and gold cardboard ornaments, took exotic shapes–moons, butterflies, fish, birds, ships, animals, flowers, trolley cars, and even automobiles.

A Victorian family’s most prized ornament was the Nuremberg angel atop the tree. It had wings of spun glass, a crinkled gold skirt, and a wax or bisque face. Angles or cherubs represented the Victorian ideal of childlike or womanly innocence.