Victorian Christmas Traditions

The Victorian Roots of Our Modern Christmas

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Many yearn for an old fashioned Christmas enjoyed by our ancestors. the problem is the old fashioned Christmas was just a marketing ploy to appeal to a growing Victorian middle class

Christmas was generally a family feast in well to do households in the early 19th century household. if their Church affiliaton approved.

Source: Public Domain by Charles Green

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The Not So Deep Roots of Christmas Present

The modern holiday of Christmas the modern holiday of Christmas as celebrated in the Western world, has its roots in the Victorian era. Both the he British and American public; took traditions from other northern European cultures and created the modern Christmas. This is a look at some of the development of these new holiday traditions.

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The English embraced the German tradtion of Christmas trees in 1851.

Source: Public Domaint

Oh Christmas Tree!

The Germans were responsible for giving us the Christmas tree. Many pagan civilizations have used evergreens as a symbol of life during the dead months of winter. We have the Royal family of Queen Victoria to thank for making Christmas trees wildly popular in the US and Britain. Prince Albert in 1841 introduced the idea of a Christmas tree or Tannenbaum. In 1850 an etching of a Christmas tree at Windsor Castle was published. every well to do Victorian home decided that they too should have a Christmas tree. A tradition kept by German immigrants in the past, the Christmas tree soon was fashionable in America too. In America soon, it was popular to decorate your tree with handmade cornucopias filled with nuts, dried fruits, and candies.

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Source: Publcic Domain

Traditional Gift Giving taught by The Three Wise Men in the Macy's Window!

In 1870 in America and Britain Christmas trees were so popular; that commercial ornaments were first made. These included molded wax figures of angels, gold paper, and balls decorated with powdered glass Americans further commercialized the new holiday, by taking the tradition of homemade family gift exchange to a new level. Nn the 1880s Macy’s department store started to feature Christmas windows with toys from around the world.. They enticed shoppers into the store, with indows that featured whimsical mechanical decorations.

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Victorian protrayal of colonial carolers who just happen to have printed sheet music.

Source: Public Domaint

Now We Can All Sing and Play Jingle Bells

Caroling was originally a way for clever entrepreneurs to take advantage of the presence of pianos in well-to-do Victorian house households.Carolers performed in groups of three. A caroler might play violin, while another sang.A third would sell the sheet music to the popular holiday tune.. Carolers with less commercial goals might sing for neighbors in hopes of being invited in for hot cider and holiday sweets.

Source: Christmas Card 1885

The First Hallmark Moments

Christmas letters to friends and family, where the norm for holiday communication in most Victorian households. Soon the idea of sending Christmas greetings on printed cards are became popular. Early Christmas cards depicted acts of charitable giving, and family celebrations. Many cards tried to portray Christmas as a long held and old fashioned holiday

Market To Market!

This was all part of the marketing of a new holiday, that required consumers to purchase ornaments, store-bought gifts, and of course Christmas cards. It became increasingly popular, to focus on children . This was the reason the Victorians could really take to the holiday. The concept of a happy and somewhat carefree childhood was a growing reality for the middle class in many countries. This was a concept that was non exsistence a few generations before. Children were just adult capable of doing less productive work.

Taking the cue from many northern Europeans, ideas about elves bringing Christmas goodies to children, the tradition of Father Christmas and Santa Claus became wildly popular. Toy makers everywhere knew they would soon have an outlet, by which to guilt parents into purchasing factory produced toys, instead of the handmade standbys.

Santa was not always pictured in red and white until Coke Cola advertising made the red and white Santa clothing standard.

Source: Public Domain

Was Christ Ever The Reason for the Season!

Americans on the whole had had a historic love-hate relationship with Christmas. Many Protestant Americans considered the pagan roots of many of the trappings of Christmas, and rejected it as a proper Christian holiday.-Christmas in the New England colonies was actually being banned. Christmas in the Cavalier colonies was associated with body drunkenness and a work stoppage. Churches struggled to keep the religious and moral significance of the holiday. Charles Dickens, story the Christmas Carol helped reestablish the myth of Christmas being a time of family emphasis and helping. Soon Christmas was being this started nostalgically remembered as a time for family gathering and community concern for the hungry. While, there was not an established tradition of this, churches could encourage the celebration of Christmas with of some moral underpinning.

Attempts to put the Christ back in our modern Christians Christmas are based on the false notion that there was a time when all the trappings of the holidays, had more spiritual meaning. Since most of the popular traditions of Christmas developed from pagan roots, this isan impossibility. Victorian myths of magical Christmas charity overcoming the Scrooges of the world is not a bad idea . It allows all people to enjoy and give during this fairly new holiday season. A true old-fashioned Christmas, it might just have included a day of work followed by a Sunday sermon, on the starkness of Christ birth in a manger. We can all be glad that the Victorians claimed Christmas as a fun children’s holiday that reminds adults of the joy of childhood.

Make Your Own Victorian Ornaments

By the early 20th century children and toys were the main focus of the holiday.

A couple could only kiss if there was berries on the mistletoe,

Source: Public Domain

The Greening of Christmas: Making Our Pagen Ancestors Proud!

Ivy greenery, mistletoe, and holly all have their roots in pagan practices honoring the winter solstice. The Victorians wanting Christmas, to be a special time even for young adults, made up the concept of kissing under the mistletoe. If a supposedly, unlucky couple found themselves under the mistletoe, powers that be insisted they kiss. The number of couples who could kiss under the mistletoe was determined by the number of berries on the mistletoe. One kiss and one berryremoved. No more berries, then there were no more kissing games. I am sure most households, tried to have mistletoe with many berries.

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The life of a woman such as could be imagined in the Anglo-Saxon world around 1840. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

English: Alice Roosevelt Longworth was the first daughter of Theodore Roosevelt. She was viewed as an ideal Gibson Girl Library of Congress and Public Domain Source: http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/gibson.htm (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

English: Pen and ink drawing of the Gibson Girl by illustrator Sarah Kaplan (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Ideal Victorian Women and Reality

From Domestic Goddess to the Gibson Girl

In the first hundred fifty years of this nation's history the "ideal" image of womanhood was defined by the individual culture a young woman was raised in. Her ethnic background, religion, social status, and geographical location defined for her in large part what the desirable attributes of womanhood were.

The Victorian period 1837 -1901 gave rise to a broad middle class and an increase in national media in the form of widely available books and national publications. The art as well as the literature of the time gave rise to a more national definition of what the ideal women was that was widely accepted and seen as a standard by which younger women tried to imitate.

The growing Victorian middle class lived life differently than the vast majority of people who still craved a living on the family farm. This was a social class that did not have to produce endlessly all the things necessary for their daily survival. The increase in cheap immigrant labor available made it possible for the middle class housewife to free herself from time consuming domestic duties to pursue other interests that revolved around the family.

Unlike her farm housewife counterpart she did not labor next to her husband on the family farm, her domestic sphere was completely separate from the public working life of her husband.

Her social relationships and domestic obligations did not include an extended family and few close friends like that of her counter part in the farming community. She was free to pursue religious interests and domestic interests within organized groups. The serious focus of her life did not have to be stretched beyond her own front porch.

The life of the middle class housewife was called the "cult of domesticity " and was widely promoted as the ideal womanhood in newly created women's magazines, advice books, and religious publications. Godey's Lady's Book is a good example of a publication that promoted the ideal of Victorian womanhood. It not only promoted the fashion of the day, but promoted the ideals of Victorian womanhood. These ideals were Piety, Purity, Submissiveness, and Domesticity.

The ideal of piety came from the idea that women were more innately moral than men and in charge of forming the early spiritual values of the children. Religion was seen as a positive way for women to occupy their minds and impact social change in society. It was not seen as normal or respectable for women to work for social change by an organized political activity. Women could strive to change life for the poor and fight the vices of drinking under the guise of piety. Men too were expected to religious but never overly unless they were members of the clergy.

Purity was of utmost importance to a young Victorian girl. Girls had no practical knowledge of their bodies or reproductive system. They were taught that Virginity was their ultimate gift to their husband on their wedding night. Normal women were thought to be asexual and sex was a marital obligation. It was seen as a Victorian wife's job to preserve the health of her husband by giving him some sex but not to wear him out or cause illness by overly sexing him. She was the moral keeper of the bedroom. Men were expected to maintain a level of sexual purity and monogamy but slip ups were expected and the wife was obligated to help save a straying husband from himself.

The ideal of submissiveness was what had been expected all along in American protestant culture. The order of things was God, husband, wife, and underage children. Victorian's added romantic charm to submissiveness with the ideal that women were physically weak and sweet natured .They needed the protection of a man. No respectable farm wife would have believed such things as she many times did the work of a man and housewife. Clothing of the Victorian housewife was so restrictive it would have made any truly physical work impossible. The tendency of women who wore tight corsets to faint simply feed the myth of a women's weak constitution.

The last ideal was that a woman was to cultivate domesticity. The good wife was the goddess of hearth and made a home where her hard working husband could find refuge from his hectic public life. The home and the children were to be in order when the husband arrived home. Women had the greatest influence and sphere of power in her own home. A good wife was frugal but maintained a peaceful and fashionable home that her husband's callers would enjoy being in. Home management was an art as many times wives had to handle the affairs of any hired help and the under aged children in the household. She was to do this in a manner that looked effortless to show her happiness in her domestic position.

Hired help for the farm wife meant hired farm labor. These were men she had to sometimes cook and clean for in addition to her own husband. The task of the farm housewife was to be sure all the farm workers were fed and to tend to her own farm related tasks sometimes while supervising young children. The appearance of the home for social impression would have been the last thing on a Victorian farm wife's mind.

A very personal account of the daily life of an American farm wife can be found a http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/farmwife.htm. Toward the end of the Victorian period a new type of ideal womanhood that set the foundation for a more independent and intellectually equal view of women developed. This women was still ridiculously romanticized, but she was seen as educated and having interests outside of the home and church. The new ideal of womanhood was known as the Gibson girl.

The Gibson Girl was a media icon created by satirist and artist Charles Dana Gibson. This model of perfect felinity lasted from the late 1890's to the start of the First World War The Gibson Girl was socially active . She was pictured attending college and swimming with friends at the beach. The Gibson girl activitely sought her suitors and was innocently, yet somewhat sexually teasing to the opposite sex. She had a public life and young womanhood and would not be expected to part with a degree personal freedom until marriage.

The Gibson girl was engaged in fun or the arts. She was seen as being to cheerful and busy to bother with such drab issues of things like suffrage. The Gibson Girl was a tamed down version of the later flapper girl. Beauty was of utmost important to her and she always sported the most complicated of up dos and she was a slave to current fashion.

Again the late Victorian version of Barbie was not a realistic ideal for a young women growing up on a farm. She would not have the financial means or time to maintain the lifestyle of a society girl. Still the Gibson Girl was seen as one who bettered her mind and selection of mates by attending college. This ideal girl may have inspired many farm girls to seek life outside the farm and attend at least a teacher's college.

Today the Victorian ideals of womanhood seem romantic and repressive ,but they probably only reflected the reality of some women's lives. The strong and thoughtful farm wife who saw herself as a partner( sometimes with bitterness) in the family farm was probably more of a reality and role model for the majority of young women. Urban immigrant women did not have the luxery of being housewives and many times worked in the homes of the middle class or factories to ensure the families survival. These real life role models showed young women that women were more important to society than just providing a domestic sanctuary for men.

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Sleeping Angels: Victorian Death Photography

Victorian era parents posing with their deceased daughter. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

English: Slum in Glasgow, 1871 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Victorians were obsessed with death because it was so much part of their daily lives. Victorian photographers many times specialized in certain areas of family photography; including post-mortem daguerreotypes. These pictures taken after a loved one had died. It was not memorial photography, that might post a small picture of a love one in life on a grave stone. These pictures were taken mostly of children. These post mortem pictures of deceased children survive in large numbers and are sought after collector's items for those with sentiment yet possibly slightly morose taste.

The young subjects of these photographs were laid out if asleep perhaps in a cradle or in the arms of the grieving parents, Many times they were also posed with their surviving siblings. Sometimes the deceased child was part of the only family portrait ever taken. In times of epidemic when there were large numbers of children succumbing to the same ailments; local photographers only took pictures of the deceased. If there were no death certificates or birth certificates issued during the period of time the child passed the death photo may have been the only record, besides the cemetery record, of the child's existence.

Changing social attitudes were reflected in death photography during the Victorian era. Pictures of children in a sentimental sleeping state were later replaced by pictures of children in coffins. This reflected the Victorians increasing obsession with the outward appearance of things associated with funeral rituals such as coffins, flowers, and grave stones. This was more evident in the late 19^th century when memorial photography with a portrait of the child while living becomes a permanent fixture on gravestones.

While we may think of the practice of Victorian death photography as morbid, Victorians had a different viewpoint .Since few photographs of most children were taken over their growing years, these photographs were often the only visual reminders grieving parents had of how their children looked at the times of their death. These pictures were not hidden away in family photo albums, but left out in parlor so all could be reminded of the family's loss and continuing love of a child that passed.

Death photography today of still born infants and those who die shortly after birth is still somewhat controversial. While some find it odd that parents would want such a reminder of their grief, others take great comfort in having pictures of a child that they were only able to see for such a short time.

Victorian death photography, especially of children has a sad, strangely positive unusual effect on those who look at the pictures today. Children that passed over a hundred years ago, project the angelic qualities that still bring tears to the eyes of those who view the pictures today.

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