Christmas in the Age of Dickens
 Christmas Tree at Windsor Castle wood engraving
(J.L. Williams from The Illustrated London News, Christmas Supplement, |
Did you know that Charles Dickens is often credited with contributing to the creation of Christmas holiday traditions as we know them today? In the 1840s, Dickens produced a series of extremely popular Christmas tales for the purpose of regenerating what he felt was the true spirit of Christmas. A Christmas Carol, the first of Dickens’ Christmas Books, is also his most beloved and widely acclaimed, cherished for its simple expression of what relations between human beings should be at Christmas time and throughout the year. In A Christmas Carol, Scrooge’s nephew speaks these words, which sum up the Christmas spirit this enduring tale has preserved for generations past and generations to come:
I have always thought of Christmas time…as a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they were really fellow-passengers to the grave and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.
Partly as a result of the traditions described in A Christmas Carol, the English Christmas was transformed in the mid-1800s. The Victorians’ “New Christmas” stressed “the traditional values of neighborliness, charity, and good will” and emphasized the obligation of the rich to the poor. As New Christmas gradually took hold, the Victorians established many of the customs that are at the center of today’s traditional Christmas celebration. In 1840, when Prince Albert celebrated the holiday at Windsor Castle by presenting his family with the “German” Christmas tree, much of England followed suit. Christmas trees became even more popular after an illustration of Victoria, Albert, and their children decorating a Christmas tree was published in The Illustrated London News in 1848 (shown above). Victorian Christmas trees were elaborately decorated with trinkets such as tin soldiers, dolls, whistles, candies, fruit, nuts, and candles. Many decorations were homemade, and children often helped make garlands and paper decorations.
The modest Christmas celebrations of the pre-Victorian era were gradually also reshaped to reflect the Victorian era’s religious revival, monetary restrictions, and its growing notions of humanitarianism and festivity. The Industrial Revolution had created a new, large and visible lower class unable to celebrate Christmas with the same luxurious abandon as their wealthier neighbors. Throughout the Victorian era, Christmas celebrations began to focus predominantly on the family, particularly on children. The originally pagan ritual of caroling was revived, gift giving grew in importance, and the traditional Christmas dinner became a beloved custom to celebrate the opportunity to come together as a family.
Click here for some recipes to try at your own holiday feast!
