A Little Bit of Christmas

An English Christmas conjures up all sorts of images: mulled cider and carols, candle-decked trees and frost-laced windows. You've got to hand it to the Victorians, they knew how to do Christmas well. Or, as that ultimate Victorian of the Victorians, Charles Dickens put it, "and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge".

This, however, poses a slight problem for those of us who dwell (metaphorically, at least) in those eras prior to the introduction of the Victorian English Christmas. My latest book, The Mischief of the Mistletoe, was set in Bath in 1803. As you've probably deduced from the title, it is a Christmas book. This meant a fair amount of scrounging around to try to figure out exactly how Jane Austen would have celebrated Christmas. (I'd like to say that was also meant metaphorically, but, since Jane Austen was coopted for a cameo in the book, I really did need to know how she would have celebrated the holiday season).

Here are a few of the more interesting things I learned. Holly and ivy? Absolutely. Christmas trees? In the immortal words of HMS Pinafore (more Victorians! They're everywhere!): "What never? Well, hardly ever." I'd always thought the Christmas tree was entirely a Victorian addition, brought to England with Prince Albert. It turns out that it actually came over a little earlier, with Queen Charlotte (formerly of Mecklenburg-Strelitz), who put up a Christmas tree in 1800. It didn't catch on. My characters would, however, have had plenty of greenery and seen the blazing Yule before them.

Which brings us to another Victorianism: Christmas carols. There were certainly Christmas songs and hymns, but Christmas caroling, as such, only became popular in the reign of Victoria. In fact, the entire Christmas season had a slightly different complexion. Whereas, for us, the big show is Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, the earlier English Christmas comprised all Twelve Days of Christmas (I make no promises about the inclusion of partridges or pear trees), with the major celebration taking place on Twelfth Night.

What would Christmas be without Christmas pudding? My book involved a lot of Christmas pudding. It turns out we have George I to thank for that. Plum pudding, it seems, had rather fallen out of favor until the monarch put it back on the map in 1714. There are all sorts of interesting traditions around the pudding. Some claim that the thirteen ingredients are meant to represent Christ and the Twelve Apostles, while the holly garnish stands in for the crown of thorns, and that one is supposed to stir the pudding three times in honor of the Three Kings. My favorite of the Christmas pudding traditions included making a wish as one stirred the pudding and the practice of hiding coins, gold rings, thimbles, or, in humbler households, a bean and a pea, in the pudding, with those who found the item being proclaimed Queen of the Feast or Lord of Misrule, given a prize, or simply getting to go home with the coin, depending on which tradition people were following.

What really struck me, though, was just how much Christmas traditions varied by region or even by town, with all sorts of ideosyncratic local practices-- much as we all have our own bizarre family holiday traditions.

What's your favorite (or quirkiest!) family holiday tradition?

p.s. Speaking of holiday traditions, I'll be following one of my own this Christmas. Two years ago, I wrote a free Christmas novella as a present for my readers. I'll be posting it on my website again this year on Christmas Eve. Just visit my News page on December 24th to find it!

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