Introduction
Every year, as December rolls around, we engage in a beloved set of holiday rituals – decorating an evergreen tree, sending out stacks of greeting cards, gathering around the table for a turkey dinner. But while these traditions feel timeless, most of our modern Christmas customs have roots that are surprisingly recent. In fact, the Christmas we know today is largely a Victorian invention.
During the reign of Queen Victoria (1837-1901), British society underwent a dramatic transformation due to the Industrial Revolution. At the same time, Christmas began to evolve from a raucous, adult-centered holiday to one focused on domesticity, sentiment, and above all, children. Through a combination of royal influence, savvy marketing, and a desire to cultivate shared values in a rapidly changing world, the Victorians reinvented Christmas, creating the template for the holiday we still celebrate nearly two centuries later.
From 12 Days of Revelry to a Family-Centered Holiday
To understand how the Victorians reshaped Christmas, we first have to look at what the holiday was like before the 19th century. In medieval and early modern England, Christmas was a 12-day festival marked by feasting, drinking, games, and role reversals – a time when social norms were relaxed and the poor could demand food and money from the wealthy. The rowdy celebration of Christ‘s birth bore little resemblance to the Victorian vision of a proper, family-centered holiday.
In the 17th century, the Puritan government in England even went so far as to ban Christmas celebrations, considering them dangerously pagan and disorderly. Though the ban only lasted from 1647-1660, it disrupted many of the older Christmas traditions. By the early 19th century, "the observance of the season was in decline, with many of the traditions maintained in rural communities but tending to die out in towns and cities," writes historian Lucinda Hawksley in "Christmas: A Biography."
It was in this context that the Victorians essentially invented a new kind of Christmas, one heavily influenced by Germanic traditions and focused on the nuclear family. Queen Victoria‘s German-born husband, Prince Albert, is often credited with popularizing the Christmas tree in England, but he was far from the first to bring this custom across the Channel. However, when the Illustrated London News published an etching of the royal family decorating their tree at Windsor Castle in 1848, it sparked a craze among the British public to emulate them.
The Commercialization of Christmas
The Victorian Christmas boom was also driven by the rise of a new middle class with more disposable income and leisure time. The first commercially produced Christmas card appeared in 1843, when Sir Henry Cole commissioned an illustrated card and had 1,000 copies printed. The idea quickly caught on, and by the 1870s, the British public was buying 11.5 million Christmas cards per year, according to data from the Greeting Card Association.
Christmas shopping also took off in the Victorian era, as department stores and magazines began to promote gift-giving as an integral part of the holiday. "The wealth generated by the Industrial Revolution created a new ‘middle class‘ who had money to spend on the trappings of celebrations and on consumer goods," writes Sarah Durkin in "Unwrapping Christmas: Festive Traditions Through the Ages." Retailers encouraged this spending with enticing window displays and advertisements in popular periodicals.
Another iconic Victorian Christmas invention was the Christmas cracker, first created by London sweet maker Tom Smith in 1847. Inspired by French bonbons wrapped in tissue paper, Smith initially sold sugared almonds in a twist of paper with a love motto inside. He later added a "crack" caused by a small explosive charge, and by the late Victorian period, crackers filled with paper hats, jokes, and trinkets had become an essential part of Christmas celebrations.
Dickens and the Idealization of Christmas
Literature also played a crucial role in shaping the Victorian Christmas ideal. Charles Dickens‘ 1843 novella "A Christmas Carol" was a runaway bestseller that helped popularize a vision of Christmas as a time of goodwill, redemption, and concern for the poor. Dickens presented Christmas as "a family-centered festival of generosity, in contrast to the community-based and church-centered observations, the somber religious occasions, or the riotous revels of the past," writes Jeanette Piquet in "Charles Dickens and the Invention of Christmas."
Though Dickens was the most influential author to mythologize Victorian Christmas, he was not alone. Other writers like Washington Irving and William Sandys also penned stories and poems celebrating the nostalgic joys of the season, often harking back to imagined medieval traditions. Christmas-themed literature experienced an explosion in popularity, with magazines like Good Words and Household Words publishing highly anticipated Christmas editions every year.
The Victorian Christmas Table
The festive food and drink we associate with a traditional Christmas also have strong Victorian roots. Roast turkey became the preferred Christmas meat during this period, replacing beef and goose as the centerpiece of the middle-class holiday dinner. Plum pudding, which had previously been associated with the pre-Lenten Carnival, became rebranded as Christmas pudding, often served flambéed with brandy as a show-stopping finale to the meal.
Another lasting Victorian legacy is our image of Santa Claus, or Father Christmas, as a jolly, bearded man in red. This depiction was popularized through poems, illustrations, and advertising in the 19th century, most notably in Clement Clarke Moore‘s 1823 poem "A Visit From St. Nicholas" and Thomas Nast‘s illustrations for Harper‘s Weekly magazine. The character merged elements of older English folkloric figures like the mischievous Father Christmas and the Dutch gift-giver Sinterklaas.
A Divided Legacy
While the Victorian Christmas is often romanticized as a magical time of family togetherness and simple pleasures, it‘s important to remember that this idealized holiday was largely a middle- and upper-class phenomenon. For the poor, Christmas was still primarily a time of want, as Dickens vividly portrayed in his novels. The lavish celebration of Christmas was simply out of reach for most Victorian families.
Moreover, the Victorian Christmas helped link the holiday to consumerism and materialism – associations that remain strong to this day. "The festival‘s evolution into a shoppers‘ bonanza now seems irreversible," writes historian Judith Flanders in "A Biography of the Victorian Christmas." Some critics argue that in domesticating Christmas and making it safe for children, the Victorians robbed it of its wilder, more subversive pagan and religious roots.
Conclusion
Despite these critiques, there‘s no denying the enduring influence of the Victorian Christmas on our modern celebrations. Every time we send a Christmas card, pull a cracker, or gather around the tree, we‘re participating in traditions that the Victorians elevated to iconic status. These customs have proven remarkably resilient, surviving war, economic upheaval, and massive social change relatively intact.
So this year, as you go about your holiday shopping and preparations, take a moment to remember the Victorians who helped shape our idea of the perfect Christmas more than 150 years ago. Their vision of the holiday as a time to celebrate family, goodwill, and generosity – in whatever form that takes for you – is perhaps their greatest gift to us today.
