Showing posts with label England. Show all posts

Saturday, September 27, 2014

Victorian Christmas Traditions

The Victorian Roots of Our Modern Christmas

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.

Friday, August 22, 2014

Being Laid To Rest In the Victorian Era

English: Funeral procession

The funeral cortege of Edward the Confessor, from the Bayeux Tapestry (Photo credit: Wikipedia) The funeral procession has been around for centuries in Westren Culture

Trauerschmuck, Brosche, Glas, 19. Jahrh. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)Example of Victorian Mourning Jewelry

English: Advertisement for Victorian mourning garb. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Victorian Funerals

Victorians were fond of the gothic and melodramatic .Death was common place and unlike most weddings of the time, they were conducted with great pomp and circumstance. If a man was wretchedly poor in life his grandest moment of social participation may have been so in death.

It was common for many lower class families to have put aside funds and for the burial of their offspring as childhood mortality was high during the Victorian era (1837-1901). The quality of life for living children suffered so that a fine funeral could be provided the dead.

The mark of any proper Victorian funeral was the funeral procession. In England the processions were much more of a spectacle than they were in the United States. It was grand procession in both countries with pall bears that sometimes had batons, pages, and men dressed in gowns that carried wands. These professions many times became drunken parades as the men waited long periods of time in the cold and drank gin to stay warm. A wealthy family might suffer great social embarrassment if the procession ended up looking like a circus parade; because their hired mourners drank too much.

The first vehicle in the funeral procession was the hearse drawn by six black horses. In the United Kingdom it was customary for the horses to sport dark colored feathered plumes on their heads. The hearse was gilded with gold and silver, and the coffin could be seen in a glass car. Some hearses sported a canopy of black ostrich feathers. Coffins were highly polished and sported silver handles and plates. If cloth covering were used on the coffin; they were attached with brass nails. Colors that were acceptable for funeral cloths were rich purples or greens. Gone were the simple sheer cotton shrouds that had graced the body of the deceased in earlier times.

The other carriages the followed contained the mourners and celery in order of their relation to the deceased. Men wore dark suits and women wore black gowns made of black crape and full black veils. Fashion dictated female family members of the departed use black gloves and black fans. Only mourners outside of the family wore fine black silk as less ostentatious black dress was expected of family members.

Only black jet jewelry was worn by mourners and by female family members for up to two years while the family was officially in the state of mourning. Society dictated that Victorian widow wear full and deep veils for up to two years and only black kid gloves for up to six months. All black dress was worn by the relations of the deceased for at least three months. Crepe was the fabric of choice for most women in morning. Younger women could get away with wearing half morning clothes of purple after a few months as long as they were not a widow.

Most widows avoided social events for 18 months after the death of their husband. Children generally were in muted colors, but not full morning garb three to six months after the death of a sibling or parent. Widowers only avoided polite society for a year after the death of their wife. It is unlikely rural farm families had the time or money to follow these strict Victorian customs too closely.

Victorian wakes were held at the home of the debased and might include friends and family not present at the funeral. Invitations might invite visitors to view the corpse with the family sitting in mourning in the next room. Notes of condolence were sent to the family within ten days after the funeral. Calling cards of a common social nature were left but not expected to be acknowledged by the grieving family for at least three months.

The wake tended to be a large meal provided by the relatives but not the immediate family of the departed. In poor homes food would be brought in by relatives and neighbors to spare the mourning family the chore of preparing food for the wake. In wealthier homes footman and servants were expected to wear simple mourning garb until their master's family stopped official deep mourning. Those who attended the wake may have been given elaborate cards commemorating the death.

Those invited specifically to a 'private "funeral were given even more elaborate cards they would keep in books or in special holders in their pillars. Death announcements on printed cards of black edged paper were sent to distant friends and relatives or out to the community in general if their paper did not print death notices.

Many times Victorian women made wreaths of the hair of the departed that might be displayed at the wake or funeral. Some were wreaths that were keep as funeral mementos and had the braided hair of several family members that passed. Some locks were worn as a sort of morning jewelry in the form of woven chokers or bracelets.

When photography became less expensive, many times photos were taken of the deceased in the casket or posed as if they were sleeping. Pictures of children and infants were especially cherished and might be even printed on funeral cards if the the family could bear the expense. Poetic verse and scripture appeared with at least drawings of angels and other religious symbols on most furneral cards.

When the casket was laid to rest in the cemetery it was thought to be too of a traumatic event to be witnessed by the if witnessed by the female members of the family or children of the newly departed. Only older male members of the family stayed to watch the casket are laid to rest in the ground.

Monday, July 28, 2014

Victorian Childhood Based On Social Class

Public Domain
The domestic situation of most Victorian families offered an endless network of caregivers. Victorian households had six children, but most had a variety of other family and others that lived in their dwelling. The nuclear family that defined the last century was a rare family in Victorian times.

Yet, the extended family traditionally thought of by us as a Victorian norm only made up about 10 percent of Victorian households. A traditional extended family is one in which three or more generations lived in the same house. An average Victorian household would consist of the husband, wife, unmarried cousins, farm laborers, maybe one aged parent or aunt, and servants if it was a household of some economic means.

The makeup of the Victorian home was in constant flux. Older children married, left to find work, or died. In some areas of industrial homes life expectancy was only in the mid twenties and at the turn of the century not much more than 50 for most middle class people. Infants and children had more than a %50 percent chance of dying before the age of 5 in many communities. It was not uncommon for a healthy child to have lost one or both parents and a sibling before they reached their teens.
This is not to mention the changes in household help that occurred frequently as younger folks who worked in these homes married or went on to better jobs. Working class children and farm children often found themselves being farmed out to other relatives or moved to communities to find work and contribute to the family coffers in their early teens.

A family that found itself in a growing industrial community would be asked to take on other family members children in hopes they would find employment in exchange for limited economic contribution. Sickly children might have been moved to relatives that lived in the county hoping the air was better for them, but returned to the city if they could not pull their weight on a friend or family's farm. It was about the survival of the family unit and those individual close to the unit that determined the fate of many Victorian children.School was not mandatory for children in England till 1840 and much later in most parts of the United States.

The working poor who had ambitions for their children went as far as to ask charitable organizations to arrange night schools in order that children working in sweat shops might have a chance to attend school. In rural communities in the United States farm families pooled their money to hire a school Master or Marm. Most children in rural areas because of weather conditions and the planting season only attended school for three to five months a year. A growing middle class after the American Civil war increased the demand for public High School.

A girl in the rural Midwest was more likely to attend high school as her brother would have been needed to work the farm or family business than she was. In an upper middle class family, a smart girl was unlikely to get a University education than her brother was because it was considered a waste of time to educate women whose only future prospects were marriage. In late Victorian times it became acceptable for middle class girls to pursue a degree in teaching so they could have a trade before marriage. Women from the poorest urban areas many of them immigrants had always worked and never had a chance at any formal education. Women teachers especially, were underpaid and undervalued by most communities.
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Discipline for children in all social levels was strict. The sexually repressed Victorians went to great extent to punish and discourage all sexual expression in children. The very lowest classes did not have this luxury and were noted to sell young girls that family could not afford to feed into what was essentially domestic prostitution. Corporal punishment was considered appropriate even for infants in some Victorian households. Wealthier families did indulge their children in lessons, games, and parties, but many of these activities were meant to help the child learn the social mores of the day and not just "play"

In the 1830's it was not uncommon for children in urban settings to succumb to cholera because of a lack of understanding in the community about the need for clean water. Most cities had amazingly unsanitary conditions that made the whole community at risk for the spread of disease. Respiratory ailments were the norm in these communities where the industrial revolution had caused so much pollution. Many times these chronic respiratory ailments cover up epidemics of whopping cough and tuberculosis.

It was not uncommon for children who avoided these ailments to still literarily grow up with "blackened lungs" and have a short life span. Mortality rates for infants, children, and women were high because of all communicable diseases in urban areas where they went unchecked. Most women in children in poorer communities were malnourished and this contributed to low disease survival rates.
Diets tended to consist of bread, cheese, beer, and occasionally meat. There were not fresh fruits and vegetables widely available to the poor and in certain climates not even the middle class. The men as head of household got the best and largest portions of any food that was served for they were literally the most important "breadwinner".

This lead too many women and children; being deprived of necessary nutrition to have the strength to fight off common diseases Life on the farm the last century had in many ways been healthier for many people. Women breastfeed until most children were two, but their milk was only as good as their diet. Wealthier women could afford wet nurses, but many times these women were less healthy than the mothers of their charges and the infant mortality rate was high. Few children who were fed cow's milk, weak tea, and sugar if their mothers could not breast feed made it through infancy.

Victorian childhood prepared most children for a life of hardship and economic uncertainty. A growing middle class assured that a least a growing number of children would have an education and life of not just day to day survival. The lack of serious medical advances for ordinary people made the prospect of death something that the average person faced every day.

Saturday, July 19, 2014

The Problem of Child Labor in Victorian America

Young boys working in textile mile Public Domain

During the industrial revolution in the late 1700's the United States and England replaced a great deal of manual labor with crude machinery. Slowly, almost as manufactured goods were made in factories instead of family owned workshops. The greed of factory owners was an incredible threat to the Victorian working class family in urban settings. These newly enterprising capitalists saw child labor as a source or cheap and obedient laborers. Children of the under classes had always worked on family farms and in cottage industries. Many children were loaned out in their early teens to neighboring farms and craftsman to learn trades. Industrial work was insidious as poor families allowed children below the age of seven to be employed for up to 14 hrs. a day for what amounted to slave wages in dangerous and dirty working conditions.

Children worked in factories 12 to 18 hours a day many times in spinning mills or hauling heavy loads.

Some of the worst conditions were those of young children; sometimes under the age of seven who, worked in coal mines. In 1810 there were an estimated 2,000.000 what we would consider school aged children working up to 70 hours a week. When poor parents could no longer feed their children they many times turned their care over to factory owners who essentially forced work upon them. A glass factory in Massachusetts used barbed wire to keep it's young male employees inside. These children were paid wages as low as forty cents a night to haul hot glass.

Church groups and labor reformers spoke out against child labor. In England, people such as Charles Dickens dramatized the plight of poor working class children in Oliver Twist. Britain and eventually the United States passed laws improving working conditions, shortening hours, and raising the age limit of those who could be employed. In the 1830's some U.S states passed laws prohibiting the employment of very young children in factories. Many times these laws were not enforced by local officials because of the belief that work for poor children would the family and the community at large.

Two girls protesting child labour (by calling it child slavery) in the 1909 New York City Labor Day parade. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It took several decades for the United States to in some ways restrict child labor. Connecticut in 1813 had passed laws stating that children engaged in labor should receive some sort of schooling . At the turn of the century only 28 states had laws restricting child labor. In the United States it took many years to outlaw child labor. Connecticut passed a law in 1813 saying that working children must have some schooling. By 1899 a total of 28 states had passed laws regulating child labor Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act was passed in 1938 setting a minimum wage for child workers and restricting most work to children over 16 years of age and hazardous work to those who were legally adults.

This ended the unfair labor practices such as companies hiring whole families, requiring them to live in company towns and pay all their wages for substandard housing and food. It also increased the number of children in poor communities that could actually attend school to the eighth grade. The children of migrant workers have little protection from exploitation in the United States , some receive schooling, but many moved to often to get a good education