Victorian Christmas Gifts
Children opening Christmas crackers: illustration on a Victorian Christmas Card It is well-known that Queen Victoria and Prince Albert popularized the German Christmas Tree in Britain, but what exactly did excited children find under it? [1] A variety of specially made and marketed Christmas gifts were available in the nineteenth century, but they also found practical items – much like the common gift of socks under today’s tree. The novelist and journalist Geraldine Endsor Jewsbury wrote to her friend Jane Welsh Carlyle of one Christmas: …one was a gathering at Mrs. Schwabe’s for her ‘Christmas Tree’, or rather, ‘New Year’s Eve Tree’, [the party was held on New Year’s Eve] which was a superb affair, and, as your poor — used to say, ‘so expensive’. The guests were chiefly children and family connections; I was nearly the only alien. The presents were a show, and the whole room looked just like the dwelling of a ‘good fairy’, while to see the delight of the children a...