Before Victoria’s reign started in 1837 nobody in Britain had heard of Santa Claus or Christmas Crackers. No Christmas cards were sent and most people did not have holidays from work.
What was Christmas like before Victorian times?
Before the Victorian era, December 25th was just another day to many of the middle and lower classes who worked through December without any days off. There was just no time to celebrate, unless you were a member of the wealthy upper class. Christmas did not start off as a visible, commercialized holiday.
How was Christmas celebrated at the beginning of the Victorian period?
The Victorians also transformed the idea of Christmas so that it became centred around the family. The preparation and eating of the feast, decorations and gift giving, entertainments and parlour games – all were essential to the celebration of the festival and were to be shared by the whole family.
What was Christmas like in the Victorian era for the poor?
Poor people in Victorian England typically did not celebrate Christmas with much festivity. Often, it was considered another work day for the poor, but some workhouses provided a slightly more elaborate means to the workers that day.
How is Victorian Christmas different from now?
Presents were shared on the evening of Christmas Eve, rather than Christmas Day as is traditional in the 21st century. In the royal household Queen Victoria insisted unwrapped presents be spread out across tables, as they did with royal birthdays.
What was the original tradition of Christmas?
The origins of Christmas stem from both the pagan and Roman cultures. The Romans actually celebrated two holidays in the month of December. The first was Saturnalia, which was a two-week festival honoring their god of agriculture Saturn. On December 25th, they celebrated the birth of Mithra, their sun god.
What is the dark history of Christmas?
From ancient times, the season that we now know as Christmas was a midwinter celebration called The Winter Solstice, or Yule. A pagan festival, The Winter Solstice was a time to celebrate the fact that the worst of winter was over, and the people could look forward to longer days with more sunlight in the near future.
What did Christmas look like in the 1800s?
By the mid-1800s, the American Christmas tradition included much of the same customs and festivities as it does today, including tree decorating, gift-giving, Santa Claus, greeting cards, stockings by the fire, church activities, and family-oriented days of feasting and fun.
Did it snow at Christmas in Victorian times?
Christmas Day of 1830 was bleak — it was -12˚C at Greenwich — and Britain’s coldest Christmas Day on record is 1878, when the temperature hit -18.3˚C in Durham. There was snow to contend with, too — it usually came thick and fast in the winter months and, sometimes, from September onwards.
How was Christmas celebrated in the olden days?
Over time, Christmas gained popularity—and new traditions. In medieval England, Christmas was a 12-day festival involving all kinds of revelry, from plays to wild feasts to pageants celebrating Jesus’ birth. Music, gift giving, and decorations all became the norm.
What did peasants do for Christmas?
Perhaps especially popular was the custom that peasant farmers were freed from labour on their lords’ lands throughout the twelve days – and that the lord should lay on a feast for them. Appropriate entertainments were expected, and these featured disguise, cross-dressing, trick-playing, and a lot of drinking.
How did rich people celebrate Christmas in Victorian times?
Gift giving was traditionally part of New Year celebrations, but the Victorians used Christmas as an occasion for giving fruit, nuts, sweets and small handmade trinkets to their loved ones. Handmade games, dolls, books and clockwork toys were popular, as were apples, oranges and nuts.
How did Victorians feel about Christmas back then?
At the dawn of the 19th century, Christmas was hardly celebrated – at least, not in a way we would recognise today. Many businesses didn’t consider it to be a holiday. Gift-giving had traditionally been a New Year activity, but moved as Christmas became more important to the Victorians.
What is the difference between old Christmas and New Christmas?
Some didn’t know about the change or refused to adopt the new Gregorian Calendar and kept the extra 11 days in their calendars. This meant that for them, Christmas fell on January 6 rather than December 25. Over time, most Christians in Appalachia started observing December 25 as Christmas.
What did the Victorians eat for Christmas dinner?
Most Victorian families had roast goose for their Christmas dinner, wealthy families ate beef, venison and turkey, often served with a chestnut or veal forcemeat stuffing.
What did they call Santa in the Victorian times?
Father Christmas
But as later Victorian Christmases developed into child-centric family festivals, Father Christmas became a bringer of gifts. The popular American myth of Santa Claus arrived in England in the 1850s and Father Christmas started to take on Santa’s attributes.
Why was Christmas actually created?
Christians celebrate Christmas Day as the anniversary of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, a spiritual leader whose teachings form the basis of their religion.
What religion was Christmas originally?
Christmas was traditionally a Christian festival celebrating the birth of Jesus, but in the early 20th century, it also became a secular family holiday, observed by Christians and non-Christians alike.
Who started Christmas first?
The first recorded incidence of Christmas being celebrated actually dates all the way back to the Roman Empire in 336, during the time of the Roman Emperor Constantine – so technically the Romans invented it, although there’s no specific person who is credited with having done so.
Why was Christmas forbidden in England?
University of Warwick historian Professor Bernard Capp said the ban was put in place by the Puritan government in 1647 as they believed Christmas was used as an excuse for drunkenness, promiscuity, gambling and other forms of excess.
What is the dark side of Christmas?
The Krampus is a seldom taught part of the Christmas holiday in the United States. In the Alpine region though, the story of the Krampus keeps children on their toes and makes sure they behave. This devil travels with Santa on his yearly journey and punishes the wicked just as easily at Santa gives his gifts.