Boxing Day, St Stephen’s Day, Christmas+1: What/How/When?

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Boxing Day, Christmas, Rome, Victoria

It’s Boxing Day (at time of writing), which means… the last blog for a bit. Alright we might pop back for Twelfth Night. But in terms of blogging the history of Christmas (all based on my new book Hark! The Biography of Christmas – eBook on the link, if you fancy), I think we’re about done for now. Yes, the Christmas season technically continues (for the Orthodox church, till as far as February 2nd), but Western Christmas culture, secularly at least, likes it all wrapped up by Boxing Day.

So before we close the season, here are some bits and pieces of December 26ths in Christmas past.

Boxing Day is NOT the day after Christmas, but the next working day after Christmas. So if December 26th is a Saturday, that year’s Boxing Day is December 28th. One thing December 26th IS each year, is St Stephen’s Day.

St Stephen was the first Christian martyr, with his stoning recorded in the Acts of the Apostles. Given that Boxing Day was a Victorian invention, the far history of Christmas Day+1 is more to do with St Stephen’s Day.

So, the most famous St Steve’s Day carol? ‘Good King Wenceslas’. It’s not technically a Christmas Carol, but since St Stevie’s Day is just one day later, it’s been lumped in. The song is based on a real person – Václav the Good, aka Duke Wenceslaus I of Bohemia. Though only a duke, he was posthumously declared a king after his martyrdom in 935. In life he was a generous ruler who saw the Christmas season as an opportunity to bless widows and orphans with alms. He was a very deep man, and crisp, and even.

Over in Finland, St Stephen’s Day was a popular day for sleigh rides with horses, contrasting with the rather sombre Christmas Day rituals. Across the Western world, it’s been a day for big sporting events – and even on a domestic level, for centuries it’s been a day for getting outside. On December 25th you stay in and eat; on the 26th you go out and walk, ride or just generally work off that turkey.

Ireland especially had this day marked for a traditional hunt, until this died out in the nineteenth century. More recently on the wane has been the Irish custom of mumming and parading with old clothes, where it’s called Wren Day. It’s still a popular day for taking the family to see a local panto at the theatre.

While there had essentially been a Boxing Day for years, it rose in significance in Victorian days when Twelfth Night stopped being celebrated so much, and commercialism say the Christmas season end, culturally at least, a little earlier. We only all gained an official day off in the twentieth century.

The tradition it was named after was just dying out – the giving of a Christmas box, from bosses to certain staff members. The Romans had given boxes from master to slave; through the centuries, boxes were contributed to year-round, to make a tidy sum come Christmas.

By Victoria’s day, the English custom was particularly that visiting workers might get such a box – not permanent staff so much as postmen or other regular visiting tradesfolk. Boxing Day kept the name, just as the rise of the middle classes saw off this hierarchical custom, plus the new ways we were giving to charity at Christmas, rather than just to delivery personnel. But if you tip your regular Deliveroo biker with a box of coins this Boxing Day, you’re continuing this custom – and getting some odd looks.

The Boxing Day sales don’t mean as much as they did through the 20th century thanks to internet sales, Black Friday and the rise of the ‘Boxing Week’ sales (just a pre-cursor to the January sales, and just after Black Friday week sales… man, shops are desperate). More on how the shops have shifted the Christmas season here.

Which leads me to note that this is probably a cheaper time than usual to nab my book, on which all these posts are based. After all, if it’s not Christmas, it’s no longer topical.

Which probably means I should stop talking about it.

Bye then.

(Merry Christmas)

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Royal Feasts: William I’s edible plates, Henry II’s farting jester & Elizabeth II’s Christmas stilton

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Christmas, Dinner, Turkey, Victoria

Our Yule blog is nearly finished! Well I’m not blogging about Christmas beyond January. That would be weird. (Although I did start this in August, so…)

As you tuck in to your Christmas dinner, waiting for the Queen’s Speech, you might ponder how the royals are eating. So here’s a taste of that, from Christmas past to present day.

The current royal Christmas. Or a spoof.

So let’s start with who I was always told was England’s first king, even though he patently wasn’t (but my Kings & Queens pencil case had to start somewhere)…

 

WILLIAM I:

Willy the Conqueror was one of several monarchs who opted for Christmas Day as their coronation day – a double celebration. Unfortunately it caused so much raucous cheering that guards outside Westminster Abbey thought the king was being attacked. they rushed to break up the rabble, killing many in the crowd and setting a few houses on fire.

His subsequent Christmases were formal, relatively calm occasions, with elaborate tableware and endless courses. Lower-ranking guests ate boiled meat on a plate made of stale bread. Having a plate you could eat certainly saved on washing up.

 

BALDWIN OF BOULOGNE:

The only non-UK one we’ll mention, in 1100 Baldwin was crowned as first king of Jerusalem. The coronation took place on Christmas Day in Bethlehem, at the Church of the Nativity, winning the prize for the Christmassiest coronation ever.

 

HENRY I:

In 1125, William’s son Henry I had a special Christmas gift for some traitors who had debased his currency: vengeance. All the country’s mint-men were invited to Winchester; by Twelfth Night, all had been deprived of their right hands and their, er… – well, they may have literally made money, but they le with no family jewels.

 

HENRY II:

1171: The grandest feast of Henry’s reign. In Dublin, Henry shocked his hosts with the sheer size and scale consumed by his travelling court. Birds served included swan, peacock, and most controversially crane. The Irish noblemen refused to eat it; Henry insisted. After-dinner entertainment featured dwarf-tossing and Henry’s legendary jester Roland le Pettour (Roland “the Farter”), lured out of retirement for his famous “leap, whistle, and fart” routine.

 

KING JOHN

John’s 1213 banquet upped the game, by serving everything from peacock to, well, game. His order included:

24 hogsheads of ordinary wine (each hogshead holds between sixty and ninety gallons. They aren’t actual hogs’ heads…)
420 pigs’ heads (oh, these are actual hogs’ heads…) 16,000 hens

Partridges and pheasants – as many as can be found
50lb pepper
2lb saffron
100lb almonds
15,000 herrings
10,000 salted eels
500lb of wax for candles
Plus cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon, and ginger spices, fresh from the Crusades

…which were starting to appear in newly-spiced mince pies. Yum.

 

HENRY III:

In 1236, the king of France gave King Henry a live elephant. 1251’s feast was Henry III’s biggest: this Christmas coincided with his daughter’s wedding, at the age of eleven. Her husband, the king of Scotland, had just turned ten – clearly he was drawn to the older lady (it’s encouraging to hear that they waited to consummate the marriage, although only till they were both fourteen).

The Christmas/wedding banquet included 70 pigs, 1,000 cod, 500 conga eels, 10,000 haddock, 1,992 hens (how specific), 1,600 partridges, 120 peacocks, 290 pheasants, 300 rabbits, 125 swans… and that was just for starters. Well it may not have been just for starters, but there was plenty more ordered too.

One guest, Benedictine monk Matthew of Paris, noted at the time: “The worldly and wanton vanity of the scene, if it were to be described in full, would produce wonder and weariness in those who heard it.”

 

EDWARD I:

He encouraged dressing up at Christmas, requesting that his lords and ladies wear fancy silk finery for an Arthurian-themed dinner at a specially constructed round table.

 

EDWARD III:

Sixty years later, Edward III was so taken with King Arthur’s legend that he created a brand new chivalrous order at Christmas – “the Order of the Garter”. His love of entertainment gave us one of our most persistent Christmas entertainments, still celebrated in some British pubs today: the mummers’ play.

 

HENRY VIII:

Henry’s Christmases were typically grand with great pageantry. In his early reign, one Christmas dinner featured “an abundance of viands as hath beene few times seene”, including venison, peacock, swan, porpoise, seagull, and heron – the more exotic the better! It’s alleged that the Duke of Northumberland ate five swans that Christmas.

 

ELIZABETH I:

She added the goose to the Christmas dinner table. It was previously a Michaelmas dish, but when news of the Armada defeat reached her on Michaelmas Day while she was tucking into her goose, to celebrate she declared goose a celebration bird for all occasions – including Christmas. Not a great celebration for the goose, of course.

 

JAMES I:

Insisted on a play for Christmas. Bad news for the actors who thought they had the day off.

 

CHARLES II:

Brought back Christmas, after Cromwell’s ban. Thanks Charley! He was also the first Briton to taste a pineapple, and the first to put ice cream on a ceremonial menu. He was served on bended knee, with a servant whose only job was to dab Charles’ mouth between forkfuls.

Table décor was sparse, but the food displays made up for it, from a two-foot high castle-shaped salt cellar to wine- owing fountains. 1671’s dinner boasted 145 dishes in the first course alone.

 

GEORGE I:

George I was German, and so enjoyed the plum pudding at his first English Christmas in 1714, that his new nation nicknamed him “The Plum Pudding King”. The dish was very popular; that year saw one of its first appearances, in Mary Kettilby’s recipe book A Collection of above Three Hundred Receipts in Cookery, Physick and Surgery, where it sat alongside the first recipe for orange marmalade.

 

VICTORIA:

I won’t go on about her. I have enough elsewhere, like here or here. Suffice to say she could eat a seven-course dinner in half an hour, and when she finished her food, all plates were cleared away – even of those who hadn’t been served yet.

We are not amused at the lack of food.

GEORGE at V:

Had a very nervous Christmas dinner in 1932, and didn’t eat a thing – he was about to give the first royal Christmas message.

 

ELIZABETH II:

To the present day… At a typical British royal Christmas, the extended family gather at Sandringham House, arriving in order of inferiority: junior royals first on 23 December, the heir to the throne joining later the next day. e youngest royals decorate the tree under supervision from the monarch, followed by German-style Christmas Eve present-opening and a formal supper.

Christmas morning sees the customary royal walk to church, possibly harking back to the Holy Days and Fasting Days Act of 1551, which states that every citizen must attend church on Christmas Day, without using any kind of vehicle. The Act was repealed in 1969, though perhaps no one ever told the Queen.

One of her favourite platters is a whole Stilton cheese, pitchforked on top with port poured on to seep through. They say it’s rather nice on a cracker, though surely you’ll dampen the bang and get a soggy crown. Then again, they’ve got enough crowns lying around.

All this is from the Amazon bestseller, Hark! The Biography of Christmas.

 

Pull! The History of the Cracker

Tags

Christmas, cracker, Victoria

Our whistlestop tour of Christmas past comes to that odd bangy paper thing that Brits will be buying the bucketload this week: the cracker. America doesn’t do the cracker. They think we’re mad. That’s okay, we think… (don’t mention Trump, don’t mention Trump).

London in the 1840s saw Christmas culture boom. December 1843 alone gave us Christmas cards, A Christmas Carol and O Come All Ye Faithful. Albert was introducing Victoria to a tree, and paper craft, and gingerbread. Victoria in turn was looking at the ancient male angel on top of the tree (formerly Jesus), and deciding she’d prefer a female angel doll to play with. London Panto meanwhile was introducing a Good Fairy character, who also had her sights on that treetop role (more on that on this tree-based post on this Yule blog).

Millions were descending on the capital for work, so Christmas now included a return home, back across country, via newfangled trains. City-dwellers took new urban festive customs back to the villages; London lit each fuse, while the country stood back to see if it went bang.

Tom Smith, cracker inventor

For the cracker, we thank London confectioner Tom Smith. On holiday in Paris in the 1840s, Smith admired the packaging of some sugared almond bonbons, delicately wrapped in wax paper, twisted at each end. Wrapping food – how very French. Smith’s English upper-class clientele were always on the look-out for culinary fashion, so he combined these French fancies with mottos from Chinese fortune cookies, selling them at his shop on Clerkenwell’s Goswell Road.

Smith’s bonbons were a hit among party hosts. They were so popular each December, Smith spent the other eleven months concocting new twists on the old formula. His customers couldn’t wait to see this year’s innovation, from trinkets to new patterns. By rebranding them as party essentials, Smith made multiple sales per customer.

In need of another redesign, Smith was sitting by the fire one night, when he heard the fiery crackle of a log burning. Eureka! Next Christmas, he added what he called ‘bangs of expectation’. By the 1870s they were called ‘cosaques’, named for the cracking sound like the whips of Cossack horsemen. A decade later, they became ‘crackers’.

As for the mottos, what began as love verses became New Year predictions, then jokes in the twentieth century. As long ago as ancient Rome, little messages were given at midwinter festivals – so this, like many Christmas innovations, was just a twist on an old theme.

By the time Smith’s sons took over, thirteen million crackers left the factory each year. Walter Smith thought to add paper hats, like the mock crowns worn at Twelfth Night parties. These January shindigs were on the decline, but the hat stayed on in the crackers. With no room for the bonbons, the Smith factory – originally a confectioner’s – removed the confectionery.

How that bit of toilet roll cardboard got in there, who can say…

This is all from Hark! The Biography of Christmas. Treat yourself, grab a copy. It’s a cracker.

From Boniface to Charlie Brown… 14 notable Christmas trees

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Christmas, Christmas tree, Germany, Rome, Victoria

I’m guessing, that this weekend is when most of our Christmas trees will go up. True to their evergreen nature, they’ve been one of the most resilient of Christmas customs – dating back before there was a ‘Christ’ in ‘Christmas’, yet only reaching Britain less than 200 years ago.

Here’s a brief rundown of some Christmas trees through the ages…

• NORSE TO SEE YOU TO SEE, NORSE… The Northern Europeans have been worshipping evergreens in midwinter for millennia. In a time when nature’s wintry decline actually worried people (that the sun wouldn’t come back and grow things again), the evergreen firs were a handy reminder that some greenery stuck around.
• ROMAN AROUND… Romans brought some evergreens inside for their midwinter celebrations, to help decorate homes.
• BONIFACE-PALM… St Boniface of Crediton was a missionary to the Germanic lands in the 8th century. Legend has it that he saw some pagan sacrificing types tie a damsel to an oak tree. Boniface stopped them by chopping down the oak, and miraculously a fir tree grew in its place, which Boniface then used as a visual aid for the three points of the Trinity (before Powerpoint presentations and Alpha courses). The noble fir tree had its place in history thereafter – though tales grow tall as well as trees.
• I CAN’T THINK OF A PUN ABOUT AUSTRIANS… Austrians were known to bring trees into homes in the Middle Ages, and the first we know of to bring cherry and hawthorn trees inside. They’d daub them with fruit and nuts, a custom that stuck as the trees made the jump to Britain and America – many trees still have impossibly uncrackable walnuts in there somewhere today.
• ADAM AND EVE… had a festival day on 24 December, so Germanic Christians linked the Garden of Eden’s Tree of Life with Christmas Eve, tying the tree to the festival firmer than you could tie it to a car roof. There were legends that at the moment of Christ’s “midwinter” birth, every tree in the world would spark back to life with shoots of green.
• TALLINN, ESTONIA… claims the first use of the public Christmas tree in the town square. In 1441 a group of bachelor merchants called the Brotherhood of the Blackheads erected a tree in the centre of town, danced around it, then set it on fire, like a Yule log. Boys, eh? This trend spread (though the fire didn’t), with similar reports from Riga in 1510.
• FRANCE… was known to have decorated trees in 1521: “They set up fir trees in the parlours of Strasbourg and hang thereon roses cut out of many-coloured paper, apples, wafers, gold foil and sweets.” The wafers symbolized the Eucharist; their descendants are the gingerbread men or biscuits hung on trees today.
• MARTIN LUTHER… didn’t just spark the Reformation; a legend tells how he developed Christmas tree decoration. Admiring the forest and the night sky, he was enthralled by a starlit fir tree and recalled the star over Bethlehem. He tried to convey this scene to his family, but words failed him, so he felled the tree and brought it home, adding candles to recreate the starry night. This was thought to be the first traditional German Christmas tree: the Christbaum.

• A ONE-OFF… In 1789 a Mrs Papendiek wrote about having “an illuminated tree according to the German tradition” – but this was an isolated occurrence, and Mrs Papendiek must have received odd looks.

• AMERICA’S TREE… American locals were also confused by German tendencies to become seasonal lumberjacks. American Revolutionary troops at Fort Dearborn in 1804 were baffled to see their German soldier-for-hire colleagues dragging firs from the forest. Pennsylvanian Germans continued the custom over the next few decades, but it remained a Germanic habit – until reports of the fashionable royal Christmases in England.
• PRINCE ALBERT… wasn’t the first British royal to put up a Christmas tree, but he was more popular than Queen Charlotte, who tried a British Christmas tree in 1800. When Albert tried again a generation later, we all followed. It helped that he had a habit of donating trees to good causes too. His trees in the palace included upside-down chandelier trees from the ceiling, and miniature table-top trees with presents around them. A picture of Victoria and Albert with their family around a tree made the Illustrated London News and sold the tree to the British public; when it was reprinted in America, it started the tradition there.

The pic that sold Britain the Christmas tree. A similar pic sold it to Americans – though Victoria had no crown and Albert had no moustache, in case they put off the American public.

• THAT’S YOUR LOT… New York entrepreneur Mark Carr created a new tree-based trade in the 1850s, when he took two ox-sleds to the Catskills and felled a few firs. He returned to the city to sell them and started the first Christmas tree lot. The Germans had started it, the English had popularised it – now the Americans were mass- marketing it.
• THE LOO BRUSH TREE… In the 1930s, the Addis Brush Company had a brainwave. William Addis had already invented the toothbrush – now his company took another sidestep, and marketed the artificial tree. Helpfully they were less flammable than the real ones, which still mostly had candles on.
• ALUMINIUM OR ALUMINUM… Either way, they were popular for just under a decade, from the 1950s to 1965. They just looked too fake – and Charlie Brown’s Christmas special, in which he goes out of his way for a real tree – even a small sorry-looking sapling – won hearts across America, seeing off the aluminium trees for good.

O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree…

Next time, we’ll look more at the things you put on the tree, from baubles to lights to sellotaped needles because they all fell off by mid-December (serves you right for buying cheap).

Also cheap is my book Hark! The Biography of Christmas.

Panto: 300 years old this year! (Oh yes it is…)

Tags

Christmas, Christmas tree, London, Panto, Theatre, Victoria

My local panto opens tomorrow (“oh no it doesn’t…”). Guildford hosts Dick Whittington this year; before that it was Aladdin, Jack & The Beanstalk, Snow White, Cinderella, Aladdin, Jack & The Beanstalk, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Aladdin, Jack & The Beanstalk, Cinderella, Aladdin…

Pantoland has clearly found its favourites over the past three hundred years. Yup, I’ve seen no mention of it anywhere… but it’s exactly three centuries since the first ever modern pantomime.

Oh, and if you’re not in the U.K., all of this probably needs nothing to you. The British panto was born in London and acquired a peculiarly unique London flavour, thanks to, as ever, a few historical quirks.

On December 26th 1717,  this new theatrical form was born, as John Rich put on ‘Harlequin Executed’, a fusion of the old Mummers plays with Italian Harlequinade.

John Rich had inherited the Lincoln’s Inn Fields Theatre from his father… but much as he tried, like recent cinematic true tale ‘The Disaster Artist’, Rich took on yet failed with tragic roles. So he reluctantly drifted into comedy, taking on the familiar role of Harlequin – a known clown role familiar across European theatre.

John Rich as Harlequin, with his ‘slapstick’

But London had an odd theatrical rule at the time: spoken drama was banned, for fear of dissent. So while the European Harlequin was a vocal role, John Rich’s version was mute. It made for a unique mime show, put on the day after Christmas.

He tried further similar plays, importing favourite characters from the continental commedia dell’arte: young lovers, old man Pantaloon, and a collection of servants like Scaramouche and Pierrot. The stories changed over the years, but the staples of modern British pantomimes were there – clowning servants, youthful love, and a grotesque character or two. Opera and ballet later joined, making an anarchic hotchpotch of all-round entertainment.

The “transformation scene” was a favourite – and still is. Harlequin would hit the scenery with his magic wand and it would change, with much backstage wizardry. The wand was actually the bat from traditional commedia dell’arte (known for causing a loud slapping sound without transferring much force – literally a “slap stick”). John Rich’s ingenious intertwining of stagecraft and story, though popular long before him in different forms, paved the way for the wondrous transformations in British pantos today, whether Cinderella’s magical ballgown or a quick set change from Jack’s beanstalk to giant’s lair.

Victorian panto dames. The stuff of nightmares.

The Italian elements were hugely popular with the London crowds of the early 18th century: The anarchy resembled the topsy-turvy Roman Saturnalian celebrations, so when cross-dressing dames joined years later, they were the perfect fit. Like the old Roman ‘Lord of Misrule’, the dame would direct the madness, in this case with singalongs from the stage.

These plays were lowbrow yet won over London, especially thanks to actors like David Garrick and the clown-to-end-all- clowns Joseph Grimaldi. By the 1800s, families made a habit of making this their Christmas outing – Harlequin’s chase scene being the children’s favourite.

An 1890 pantomime.

 

Vaudeville and music hall added their influence over time, and there came a need for fuller storylines. Just as in their Harlequinade roots, people preferred classic tales, so that the audience would follow the story easily, and focus on the fun and games added on top. Traditional fairy tales became a popular choice.

One of the most famous, Peter Pan, debuted at Christmas 1904, not as a pantomime but a serious play. The audience of adults were surprised when the curtain rose to discover a play for children, though children who did see it that winter were petrified by Captain Hook (fearsomely portrayed by Sir Gerald du Maurier, father of novelist Daphne). Many fainted and had to be carried out.

Gerald du Maurier as Captain Hook. Boo, hiss.

Oh and it’s thanks to panto that some of us put a fairy on our trees, rather than an angel. It was an angel for centuries – a male angel in fact, representing Jesus. It was called the ‘tin-gold angel’ to get past Puritan banning types, who wouldn’t allow an icon of Jesus anywhere, let alone atop a pagan shrub. The male angel became female (like those fish in The Blue Planet II recently – did you see it?) when Victoria was on the throne – she loved dolls, her kids loved dolls, so by making the angel a female doll, the commercial world sold a few more each year to be played with by girls across Britain.

With panto still as popular as ever, the Good Fairy had joined the show now, as a bridge between audience and performance, to assure the children all would be well, to help narrate the plot, and to give roles to her from that thing (oh that would bit would come later). She was a popular role – so popular that the angel on the tree sometimes was packaged and sold as a fairy. So it’s a fairy on top of your Christmas tree… that’s why.

Oh yes it is.

All this and more is in Hark! The Biography of Christmas. It’s now technically a bestseller (in a very niche sub-category on Amazon, but it all counts).

The (3 Wise) Men Who “Invented” Christmas

Tags

A Christmas Carol, Christmas, Christmas tree, Dickens, Germany, Mulled wine, Prince Albert, St Nicholas, Victoria, Washington Irving

There’s a new film out this week, telling the story behind A Christmas Carol – and it’s one heck of a tale. Such a tale in fact that I’ve been pitching around an idea for a film based on the story behind A Christmas Carol for the past year or so. Ah well. They beat me to it.

Such writerly misfortune – right idea, wrong place, wrong time – is the sort of thing that lies behind Dickens’ festive tale. As for the title, Dickens was known in his later years as ‘The Man Who Invented Christmas’. When he died, so entwined was he with the festive season that a Covent Garden barrow-girl was heard to say: “Dickens dead? Then will Father Christmas die too?”

Cheer up, Charlie.

But invent Christmas? Yes alright, that’s a little far. He certainly helped revive it though. He gave us little bitesized Christmas presents, by popularising mulled wine in his book, giving us Scrooge and ‘humbug’, as well as one of the first printed greetings of ‘Merry Christmas’. (Earlier still was the “Merry Christmas” in the song “We Wish You a Merry Christmas”, sung door-to-door in the mummers’ tradition of performing for money (or figgy pudding. No one quite knows when that song came about, though it pre-dates Dickens. Possibly the earliest recorded use of the greeting was in 1565 as “Mery Christmas”, though the more satisfying fuller phrase, “Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year”, first appears in a 1699 letter written by an English admiral. There’s then a gap, then Dickens brings the greeting back in his 1843 book. By chance that very same week, the greeting was also revived for the first commercial Christmas card.)

He gave us bigger presents too – refocusing the festive season on family and charity. His book was so influential, that The Gentleman’s Magazine attributed a boom in charitable giving to A Christmas Carol. One American factory- owner read it on Christmas Eve and closed his factory the next day, instead giving a turkey to each employee. Vanity Fair author William Makepeace ackeray noted that, “A Scotch philosopher, who nationally does not keep Christmas Day, on reading the book, sent out for a turkey, and asked two friends to dinner – and that is a fact.”

But there were bigger Christmas changes afoot. Industrialisation was the big influencer: workers flocked to the cities, changing the focus of Christmas from village customs to urban ones, and household ones, as people sought to recreate the festival in their homes rather than the village greens. It meant people travelled home for Christmas for the first time (on trains rather than across fields). And it meant a new middle class, which meant that aspiration became a thing. The poor looked to the keeping-afloat, and their mid-sized Christmas trees, who were looking to the upper classes and their big Christmas trees, who were looking to the royals and their…

Ah yes. That’s where Prince Albert comes in.

See, I think that in terms of people there were three wise men of the Victorian period who changed Christmas celebration beyond recognition. So here are our three kings of the nineteenth-century Christmas, and the gifts they bring:

Washington Irving. The world’s first international bestselling author… and inventor of ‘knickers’

✧  WASHINGTON IRVING… The American brings the modern Christmas in from the cold. Irving was the world’s first international best-selling author, bringing us Rip Van Winkle, Sleepy Hollow, the word ‘knickers’, the pudding ‘Knickerbocker Glory’, and the New York nickname ‘Gotham City’. It was on the same visit to the East Midlands (rather backward) village of Gotham that Irving also swung by the West Midlands manor house of James Watt (of the ‘Watt’, yes). Here he was treated to a cosy stately home Christmas, and so Irving wrote it up in exaggerated fashion in the early nineteenth century, and the world read of the cosy classic English Christmas of roaring log fires, party games, carriage rides and family joy – even if Irving was making it up a bit. He also wrote a separate book helping to revive the Dutch settler St Nicholas tales, of flying over rooftops and delivering presents. So Irving’s our Ghost of Christmas Past. Our wise man who brings a sweet warm reviving feeling to Christmas: mmmmmyrrh.

✧ CHARLES DICKENS… The Englishman adored Irving’s writings: “I do not go to bed two nights out of seven without taking Washington Irving under my arm upstairs to bed with me.” Easy, Charles. Dickens was inspired by Irving to write his Christmas classic (see below, when they met.) From the pages of Dickens’ novella, you can almost inhale the scent of Cratchit cooking, the chill of crisp snow underfoot, and the homely aromas of Fred’s Christmas party. So the gift of Dickens – our Ghost of Christmas Present – is a Christmas that tingles our senses. If you don’t agree, frankly I’m incensed.

✧  PRINCE ALBERT… The German brings old-world charm and nobility, to be emulated by all royal-watchers. So beloved is the Prince Consort that the customs he enacts, from Christmas trees to gingerbread and fruit and candle decorations, are copied throughout the land. Christmas cards with the royal couple’s image are the height of fashion. When Albert skates at Christmas (rather well actually, certainly far better than Her Majesty), everyone skates. He even once rode a sleigh from London to Slough (of all the places – one hopes it was just so they could call it a Slough Ride…). He even helped revive turkey (not a turkey – there was no reviving that…). So Albert, paving the way for home decoration and celebration for centuries to come, is our Ghost of Christmas Future, and his gift is the sparkling royal Christmas that we all crave: pure festive gold.

Uncle Albert (to his nephews)

 

PS:

They all met, you know. Just not all three together. Here – true story – are the times our three wise men met each other:

✧  WHEN ALBERT MET DICKENS… The Prince Consort was a fan of Dickens, but the feeling was not mutual – simply because Dickens was in love with the Queen. On the royal wedding night at Windsor Castle in 1840, the already-married Dickens protested beneath the newlyweds’ bedroom window by rolling around in the mud. Not surprisingly it was ineffective. In further protest, Dickens rudely refused all royal requests for an audience for the next three decades. The royal couple attended some of his performed readings, but Charles continued to turn down offers of honours, or a request to contribute to Albert’s memorial fund after his demise. The Queen and the writer finally met, holding a cordial conversation, just weeks before Charles’ death.

✧  WHEN DICKENS MET IRVING… The two writers admired each other greatly, and Dickens stayed at Irving’s house in New York on 1 February 1842, during his American speaking tour. Dickens was inspired by the American’s tales of the classic English Christmas, as well as by the horrors of the slave trade that he glimpsed while on tour. So he felt moved to write something to help England’s poor; visits to Cornish tin mines and Manchester factories followed, then an attempt at a political pamphlet, before he had the idea to write a ghost story – but it began at Irving’s home, ‘Sunnyside’.

✧ WHEN IRVING MET ALBERT… The consummate traveller had grown a little world-weary by the time he attended a royal ball in London in May 1842, but his overwhelm at the sight of the regalia was classically American. Adoring the pomp and ceremony, he was impressed by Prince Albert, whom he noted “speaks English very well”. Ever the observer, Irving perceived that the Queen looked flushed and bothered by the entire event, continually adjusting her crown.

All this is from my new book Hark! The Biography of Christmas. Do buy.

Let’s talk turkey…

Tags

Books, Christmas, Thanksgiving, Turkey, Victoria

Happy Thanksgiving! Or if you’re not in the United States – or just ungrateful… then Happy Unthanksnotgiving.

The Thanksgiving turkey gets in a good month before the Christmas turkey. So today’s the day that, once again extracted from my book Hark! The Biography of Christmas, we’ll delve into that particular festive treat.

The English have always enjoyed Christmas, Turkey and making bad jokes about Christmas and turkey. 

The bird landed on Western dinner plates around the sixteenth century, not long after roast dinners were starting to resemble today’s a bit more. Root vegetables were eaten nearly as much as meat and newcomers like sprouts were joining the plate. Such perennial “favourites” (personally I still have to gulp my one-sprout-a-year down with a glass of red) offered highly nutritious vitamins through the season, oddly growing in even the roughest of winters.

New foodstuffs arrived in the hand luggage of explorers. Sugar was an expensive luxury but helpful for the traditional Christmas sweetmeats; sugared bacon was a Tudor delicacy. But the prized souvenir was a meat, because after all, a special occasion such as Christmas deserves a special bird – and goose, swan, and peacock had all been done.

The Southern Mexican turkey was a domesticated bird, making it very easy to transport, so by 1525 these birds started appearing in European ports. Originally it was confused with the African guinea fowl, arriving via the Ottoman empire, land of the Turks. So the turkey suered a case of mistaken identity; though it had never even been to Turkey, the name “turkey” stuck.

The whole naming of this bird is one giant fiasco, to be honest. The country it was thought to be from wasn’t even called Turkey until after World War I, so the bird was (wrongly) named first. Then there’s the fact that the bird they thought it was wasn’t even from Turkey (which wasn’t called Turkey) but East Africa – the birds just changed hands a few times between Turks en route. Finally, the world over, they all seem to call it different names based on other places that it’s not even from. The Turks themselves called it “an Indian bird”, as did the French who call it an “Indian rooster” (a “coq d’Inde”, now abridged to “dinde”). In Malaysia it’s a “Dutch chicken”, while the Portuguese call it a “Peru bird”. The humble turkey should really be called “Mexican guinea fowl lookalike”.

A Mexican guinea fowl lookalike.

Yorkshireman William Strickland bought six turkeys from some Native Americans and brought them to British shores via the Spanish Netherlands; the first turkeys were sold in Bristol at the price of tuppence – unsurprisingly at that rate, the locals gobbled them up.

But this was at least a two-bird race to the dinner plate. The goose was faring well as a seasonal bird to eat, just not necessarily at Christmas. Instead Michaelmas on 29 September was the day that each goose should look over its shoulders. They’d been popular with the Celts in their Samhain festival and also in our very old friend Yule.

Long before the Dutch/American/Mexican/Peruvian/Indian turkey could get its claws onto our Christmas menu, the goose beat it to it, all thanks to another sea explorer, not bringing anything back from the New World but defending the Old World…

Sir Francis Drake and Lord Charles Howard led the defence against the Spanish Armada, and on 29 September 1588 word reached Queen Elizabeth of their success. She was tucking into her traditional Michaelmas goose at the time, and was so overjoyed at the victory that she decreed that goose become celebration food from then on. That Christmas, roasted goose was the bird of choice. So when Michaelmas later waned, the goose clung to Christmas instead. In the next century though, James I preferred turkey to boar’s head, so the goose’s old rival was back on the table. In the Victorian era, popular Prince Albert began a fashion (for those who could afford it) for the more succulent turkey – and the goose’s goose was cooked.

Victoria did of course find a variety of meats placed in front of her each Christmas, including exotic birds like swan, snipe, or capercaillie. In 1851, the royal menu contained turkey for the first time, and  that meant that the nation would copy. Thanks to Victorian methods of mass production, this was now possible at an affordable cost.

These boots were made for walking (to the dinner table)

Over in Norfolk, these turkeys would be raised with the sole aim of the Christmas dinner plate. So how to get hundreds of turkeys from Norfolk to London in time? Simple. Starting in October each year, you make them walk to, yes, their own execution. is annual procession of the doomed birds was quite a sight, especially thanks to the shoes they wore. To protect their feet, each turkey had hard-wearing leather boots for the 100- mile one-way commute to market. At least they had a big meal waiting for them in London; the weary birds were fattened up in time for Christmas.

For more trivial cutlets and factual drumsticks like this, grab yourself a copy of Hark! The Biography of Christmas, rrp £7.99. 

12 Christmas Creatives: A Dozen People to Thank for Our Modern Christmas

Tags

bing crosby, Books, Christmas, Dickens, Luther, Macys, Magazine, Nativity, Oliver Cromwell, St Nicholas, Victoria

Local mag (well, local to me) The Guide 2 Surrey printed a nice article with nice pics in their pre-Christmas November edition.

If you’re not local – or if you are and haven’t grabbed one – here (or PDF below for a more easily readable version) are your twelve Christmas creatives to thank for making Christmas what it is today…

LittleGuide2Yuletide_Christmas creatives 44-45 NEW_Nov 17

Who have I missed out? Do let me know…

And don’t forget: Hark! The Biography of Christmas is available for buyin’, ratin’ ‘n’ reviewin’ now.

Dickens hosts Christmas (& a book launch…)

Tags

A Christmas Carol, Books, Charity, Christmas, Dickens, Family, Hark, Mulled wine, Snow, Victoria

Tonight I’m officially launching Hark! The Biography of Christmas in London’s glittering just-to-the-east-of-West End. I’ve particularly chosen the nearest bookshop to Dickens’ house and museum – because where better than within sight of “the man who invented Christmas”…

If you’ve not been to his house/museum, I thoroughly recommend it. I pondered it as a venue for the launch itself – though sole hire was a little pricey for little ol’ me, so the Blackwells/Caffe Nero a couple of streets away seemed as good a place as any.

Charles Dickens (accurate depiction)

In tribute to, as Tolstoy called him, “that great Christian writer” (even though, yes, Chuck D’s version of Christmas almost pushed out the Christian Christmas – with values of charity, family and snow dominating most festive households), here’s a sample from the book that’s all Dickensian, like. Through the book I’ve pinpointed the 12 dates of Christmas becoming more like our current Christmas, so…

 

…On our ninth date of Christmas… (London, 19 December 1843)

As Mr Dickens steps into the London street, he can almost feel the snow beneath him – except this year he’ll have to imagine it. Sadly the weather has not played snowball with his wintry novella; London’s Christmas 1843 is the tenth mildest December on record. Still, the seven-degree day means that the streets are busier, and more are out seeking his book on its day of release. Perhaps as they read they’ll hark back to white Christmases of yesteryear – after last year’s even warmer winter, those wintry days may be behind us for good. Thankfully for us, Charles’ first eight Christmases were white ones, so for him and his generation, that’s what a Christmas should be, even if they’ve become rarer as he’s grown older.

The writer cannot help but smile as he hears a boy advertise his wares: that he has stock of Mr Dickens’ latest work, A Christmas Carol. He’s well-known but his star has been fading a little – perhaps he spent a little too long touring America. The written works too may not have quite delivered as promised. The recent Martin Chuzzlewit left Dickens and his publisher out of pocket after sales failed to match the success of Oliver Twist.

So Dickens is self-publishing this new book, hoping that a cut of the profits will prove wiser than taking a lump sum. Those printing costs have been high though, so this book needs to sell well to turn a profit. The look of this edition appeals to Charles, ever the perfectionist: the red cloth cover and golden pages reflect the colours of Christmas – far better than the ghastly olive endpapers originally printed. It was only finalised two days ago.

Many are parting with their five shillings for a copy. Profiteering aside, Charles’ travelling has given him a new perspective on his career – more cultural commentator than writer-for-pleasure – and this is the first major publication since adopting this new role. He has campaigned against slavery in the United States, and following trips to Cornish tin mines and impoverished industrial Manchester, he has been determined to make a difference. In particular, Charles wishes to provoke his middle- and upper-class readers into action by highlighting the social injustices under their noses. After a faltering start turned this passion into a political pamphlet, Dickens has instead opted for a Christmas ghost story, a genre with “twenty thousand times the force… [of] my first idea”.

Christmas is a family occasion for Charles, and he’s looking forward to the two official days off next week with his four young children, wife Kate, and Kate’s sister Georgina who lives with them to support the house. What better time to commune with the family than Christmas, when the children can enjoy a parlour game or be baffled by his latest magic trick? One of Charles’ sons will later write that he adored this “really jovial time… my father was always at his best, a splendid host, bright and jolly as a boy and throwing his heart and soul into everything that was going on… And then the dance! There was no stopping him!”

He passes house after house, where later carollers will doubtless be reviving their tradition of singing for money. Charles smirks: he has a carol of his own. His novella is fully titled A Christmas Carol in Prose, Being a Ghost-Story of Christmas. He’s no composer or lyricist, but was keen to add his voice to the carol renaissance of late, and he’s even written “staves” (or stanzas) instead of chapters.

The tale of Ebenezer Scrooge’s transformation from miser to philanthropist is a deliberate morality lesson of warmth amid snow, of hot turkey and family cheer. There are glimpses of a middle-class Christmas with party games like Snap Dragon and Blind Man’s Buff, as well as a barely struggling working-class dinner with a roast goose and Christmas pudding. There’s even mention of a mulled wine called “Smoking Bishop”, made from port, red wine, citrus fruit, sugar, and spice. Dickens enjoyed a glass or bowl of Bishop at the upper-middle-class Christmases of his youth, even as a child; after all, alcoholic punch is a safer bet than drinking water.

This bishop is smokin’…

The book features nostalgic trips to past Christmases – essential in this fast-moving world of railways and factories – as well as a timely reminder to be truly present at our family festivities. There are, of course, ghosts; perhaps the Christmas ghost story will become a trend. Dickens’ Ghost of Christmas Present is based on the Roman god Saturn, figurehead of their Saturnalia festival.

Dickens is fond of pacing these streets. While creating this story, he walked “fifteen or twenty miles many a night when all sober folks had gone to bed”. He wrote obsessively, starting just two months ago, and while writing, “I wept and laughed, and wept again.” Six weeks later the book was complete, with the last pages finished in early December. Already he is mulling discussions for New Year stage adaptations – several different productions will crop up within the month, with his backing or not.

Charles is recognised by one well-wisher out delivering an envelope via the new “Penny Post” system, established just three years ago. Perhaps one day Charles’ books may be delivered by similar means – though surely not for a penny. Dickens wonders if that envelope contains one of the brand new Christmas cards, on sale just a few streets away in Sir Henry Cole’s art shop. Time will tell if the enterprising experiment works. By Christmas, Sir Henry will sell 1,000 at a shilling each, while today alone, A Christmas Carol will sell six times as many for five times the price. Selling out in a day, more books will be printed to keep up with Christmas demand.

For now, Charles enjoys his walk through London. Next week he will take his young family through these streets to the toy shop in Holborn, for their annual custom of choosing one present each. Hopefully the book will sell well – Kate has a fifth child on the way. If he were visited by a Ghost of Christmas Future, he could be told that within a few years they’ll have ten children.

As for the book, its influence will be immediate. Within a few months, The Gentleman’s Magazine will attribute a boom in charitable giving to A Christmas Carol. One American factory-owner reads it on Christmas Eve and closes his factory the next day, instead giving a turkey to each employee. Vanity Fair author William Makepeace Thackeray says of the book: “A Scotch philosopher, who nationally does not keep Christmas Day, on reading the book, sent out for a turkey, and asked two friends to dinner – and that is a fact.”

 

I adore A Christmas Carol. I know it’s early in the season, but plan to read that between now and Christmas. Oh, and plan to read this.

Charity & ITV’s Victoria (plus Chris Rea & speed-eating)

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Books, Boxing Day, Charity, Chris Rea, Christmas, Dickens, Hark, Victoria

On last week’s episode of ITV’s Victoria, Doctor Who companion Clara Oswald (who has been guised as the Queen in this several-series length spin-off, presumably since The Doctor abandoned her in 19th century ITV-land) found that the divide between rich and poor was becoming tricky for Vicky. Her Maj chose to have a ball to support London’s poor merchants; London’s poor merchants thought she was having a laugh. Her realisation that regal pomp clashed with the impoverished everyday lives of millions was a very real historical issue, with outcomes that paved the way for the welfare state and charitable causes today.

So as I clumsily blog about Christmas history when it’s not really Christmas (still very awkward as I write in September – but I do have a book that’s now available and I wish to urge you to buy by reading these blogged words), I thought it might be good to zoom in on the wealth gap and ensuing charity that came in during Victoria’s reign, which then swiftly attached itself to the festive season.

Victoria – with a special sceptre encrusted with ‘itv’ at the top.

A year prior to taking the throne, Victoria was so moved by a visit to a gypsy camp that she urged her mother to send for provisions and blankets. She later established a Christmas tradition of handing out hampers at Windsor Castle, providing a ton of bread and half a ton of plum puddings, as well as plenty of beef, potatoes, and coal.

But when she dined, she didn’t skimp on portions herself. Ignore the size of actress Jenna Coleman – Big Vic Regina was a big eater, and a fast one too. Her Majesty could put away a seven-course dinner in just half an hour. Unfortunately for her guests, custom was that once the Queen had finished a course, everyone’s would be cleared. So hundreds of guests attended, only to find that many weren’t even served their food before the Queen (served first) had finished eating hers. In such a vast hall, inevitably many didn’t eat. There was a side table at least, for anyone peckish between courses (if you had courses at all), plus a public gallery where any public could watch this gorging spectacle. But do we really want to just watch someone else eat? Let them (watch me) eat cake…

Anyone for Victoria sponge cake?

The Victorian era changed Christmas more than any other period of history. And the biggest influence? Not Dickens, nor crackers, cards, charity, Christmas trees, Victoria nor Albert… but industrialisation. It created a middle class, and it made people flock from country to city. There were a million Londoners in 1800 and nearly 7 million by the end of the century, making London the world’s largest city. City life has benefits in terms of employment, but at the cost of community spirit – so our olde Englishe Christmassy customs – wassailing, orchard blessing, mummers touring the village, the parish priest blessing each family home – all were under threat, and largely absent from city life. In the country, more effort went into decorating the village church; urbanites instead decorated where they lived – with whatever their low incomes could afford. Public feasting became private feasting.

The home itself, rather than the house, was becoming a new phenomenon of its own. While the workhouse was in no way a good place to be, advancements in heating, plumbing, and eventually electrics soon meant that for many, evening and winter had the potential to be enjoyable like never before. (Just wait until radio and television.) The domestication of Christmas was the festival’s biggest leap for a millennium. Now customs didn’t belong to the community but to the family.

With the workforce gravitating towards cities, there developed the idea of returning home for the family Christmas. In the past, villagers had but a short walk to see relatives; now hordes of city-dwellers made that seasonal exodus back home, like the holy family for the census. New modes of transportation made this possible: trains, or even the omnibus. As the railways spread, people could move further from their birthplace to find work, meaning that a Christmas family reunion was something to anticipate, compared with a stroll over a field to say hello to Mum. To this day, we’re still moving – as recently as the 1990s, the average Brit lived five miles from their birthplace; at the time of writing, that’s now 100 miles.

With a new middle-class (thanks to new technology and employment) came aspiration. Before it was serfs and royals – now the middle-class could look to the Queen, while the working-class could look to those middle-class types looking to the Queen. Social mobility wasn’t easy – but it was at least an idea.

Then along came Dickens. More of him and A Christmas Carol on another blog post – but suffice to say his trump card was painting Scrooge as the hardest of hearts, showing that even he could become the humanitarian of the book’s finale. This ushered in a new charitable connection to Christmas, his contemporaries quick to recognize that this was one of the few books to improve the behaviour of those who read it. Just a few months later, The Gentleman’s Magazine attributed a boom in charitable giving to A Christmas Carol. One American factory-owner read it on Christmas Eve and closed his factory the next day, instead giving a turkey to each employee. Vanity Fair author William Makepeace Thackeray noted that, “A Scotch philosopher, who nationally does not keep Christmas Day, on reading the book, sent out for a turkey, and asked two friends to dinner – and that is a fact.”

Charity had been associated with Christmas for many years. In 1667 Samuel Pepys reported in his diary that he “stopped and dropped money at five or six places, which I was the willinger to do, it being Christmas”. For many years churches had rattled their boxes and monarchs had rewarded their poorer subjects. Bosses emptied their charitable boxes to employees the day after Christmas – though this custom faded away in the later Victorian years, just as she encouraged ‘Boxing Day’ as an official holiday – so at least it would be a day off for workers, if not ready cash in a box.

Whether inspired by Dickens or not, four years after A Christmas Carol Victoria ensured extra funds for Christmas dinners at workhouses across the country. So that’s nice. Hopefully she didn’t turn up too – otherwise she’d finish them all off in thirty minutes, knowing her.

Another time, we’ll look at her husband Albert’s festive contributions (from the Christmas tree to paper decorations and German markets), and another time still, far nearer Christmas, we’ll get all Dickensian.

For now, buy the book. Thanks.