Christmas Past: A Selection from Victorian Magazines

by dulcie-m-ashdown (Compiler)

The Victorian Christmas is everyone's ideal of what a Christmas ought to be; children enraptured before a candlelit tree, tables groaning under an abundance of turkey, goose and pudding, stories of ghosts and hobgoblins, carol singers, church bells ringing through the midnight air. It is only in the last hundred years or so that such Christmas feasts and entertainments have been shared by the majority, rather than by the privileged few.

In Victorian times, 'Christmas as at Windsor' became the established order, for it was the festivities of the Royal Family that people took as their model. The popular Press was mainly responsible for the wide dissemination of the new ideas and from the mid-1860s Christmas features, stories, poems and pictures, beyond the purely religious sphere, won a place in December issues of magazines.

Culled from the pages of the Victorians' own reading matter, this book provides a kaleidoscope of their Christmas celebrations and festivities. Their meals, their clothes, their home-made entertainments and gifts, even their self-conscious awareness of charity and the claims of the poor in the midst of their own indulgence, all combine to recreate the atmosphere of Christmas Past.

152 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1976

Reviews

[Katherine B]

I enjoyed this a surprising amount.

It is really interesting and informative and gives an enlightening account of victorian Christmas traditions.

My favourite stories were Plessy's Christmas eve, A Christmas ghost story and Christmas in the forest. The sections on how they used ingenuity to MAKE gifts was particularly interesting.

Some stories are, yes, very moralistic as is common in stories around that time. However, the only story I couldn't get through was Dr Davidson's last Christmas at Drumtochty - The narrative didn't flow at all and the attempt at mimicking a certain dialect made it almost impossible to understand.

I would recommend to anyone interested in victorian history, literary history or Christmas traditions.

[Diane in Australia]

This book contains articles, and illustrations, featuring Christmas customs, decorations, food (including recipes), and entertainment published in various Victorian periodicals, including The Infant's Magazine, Little Folks, Cassell's Family Magazine, The Woman at Home, and The Strand Magazine.

3 Stars = I liked the book.

Examples:

[Sarah]

Many of the Victorian stories seem very sentimental to a modern reader. The feature on cracker making was interesting, like an olden days "Inside The Factory".