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 and the zeal with which, after seizing their gifts, they fell to plundering the tree of its gilt apples and bonbons, was charming. There were little tiny fairies, workboxes with gold fittings, ball-dresses, shawls, cloaks, brooches, &c., for the elder ones, and books, pictures, mats, puzzles, dolls, toys of every description, for the younger ones, but all so beautiful. The room was dazzling with light, and it was altogether the prettiest sight I ever saw. The tree bore for me a ‘polka’-jacket to wear in the house — grey tweed, trimmed with blue, and lined with blue quilted silk — quite charming. Mrs. — gave me an adorable châtelaine, full of everything that is possible or impossible in steelwork from a whistle down to a corkscrew. I go clanking about in it, like a ghost in a pantomime, and it is the envy of all beholders. [2]

 

This variety of gifts certainly speaks to the wealth of the Schwabes, and their guests, as such a display would not be common. But the types of presents Jewsbury lists were to be found under many a Christmas tree.

For the children, toys, puzzles, books and games were plentiful. This would of course give the children lots of entertainment for the Christmas period, but also afterwards. Many richly illustrated gift books were manufactured, specifically for the Christmas period, and they often contained stories with morals for the children to learn from year-round. [3] The candies and bon-bons found on the tree were, of course, ready for immediate consumption in the festive period, and added to the excitement of the day.

Geraldine notes that for the older children, as well as for herself, the gifts beneath the tree consisted of items of dress. Dress gifts were common for special occasions throughout the year, including birthdays, christenings, marriages, and even just as tokens of affection not tied to a specific day. These gifts could be either handmade or purchased, but as more and more mass-produced clothing became available, the handmade dress gifts took on a new meaning; with the time and labour spent in their creation giving them a unique emotional value.

Geraldine’s gifts of a polka-jacket and a chatelaine are both intended for wear in the home, suggesting a level of intimacy with the Schwabes. The chatelaine was a common accessory of the mid-Victorian period, typically made from gold, silver, steel, or pewter, with a central belt clasp, from which various items are attached with chains, including, as she describes, ‘…a whistle down to a corkscrew’. Although the expense of the chatelaine depended on how many attachments it had, and the material used in its construction, it was certainly no cheap gift. This reinforces the connection between the Schwabes and Jewsbury; it may also have provided the Schwabes with a chance to show Geraldine and their guests just how generous they could afford to be. 

Example of a Victorian chatelaine

The description of the Schwabes’ Christmas tree and its many presents reflects a dazzling Christmas that most families in Britain would not have had financial means to create. This did not mean, however, that working-class Christmases were without festive cheer or lacked presents entirely. Presents imbued with just as much emotional meaning were given, and these often took the shape of dress gifts. Practical, with use extending beyond the festive period, dress gifts could be handmade from scraps of old fabric or hand-me-down clothing resized for younger children, and they could still elicit a sense of Christmas joy for working-class children. We might assume that dress gifts were given mostly by women to women, but my research has shown that there is a much narrower division between mixed-gender gift exchanges and single-gender exchanges, regardless of class. This shows that mothers, sisters, aunts, as well as fathers, brothers, and uncles all understood and valued the giving of gifts. The importance of Christmas gifts could even be potentially life threatening; Julie-Marie Strange notes that miners took on more weight, increasing the risk to themselves, to buy their children Christmas presents. [4] In Victorian Britain, then, where men were understood to be the breadwinners of the family, it is no surprise then, that the jolly old elf took the form first of Father Christmas, rather than the imported American Santa Claus. [5]

 

Michaela Cardo is a PhD candidate at Queen’s University, Kingston and Durham University. Her thesis, tentatively titled “Gifted Lives: Dress Gifts and British Cultural Life, 1830-1870,” examines the role that gifts of dress played in creating and maintaining gender norms, interactions with material culture, and practises of sociability in the mid-Victorian period. Her musings can be found on Instagram @historyunlaced and on Bluesky @historyunlaced. 

 

Notes

1. Marc Kosciejew, ‘Documenting Queen Victoria’s Christmas Tree: A Conceptual Analysis of Newspapers, Communities, and Holiday Traditions,’ Media History 27 no. 4 (2021): 457.

2. Geraldine Endsor Jewsbury, Selections from the Letters of Geraldine Endsor Jewsbury to Jane Welsh Carlyle. Ed. Mrs. Alexander Ireland. (London: Longmen’s Green and Company, 1892,) https://search.alexanderstreet.com/view/work/bibliographic_entity%7Cbibliographic_details%7C4189681, 368.

3. Tara Moore, ‘Christmas Books and Victorian Book Reviewing,’ Victorian Periodicals Review 45 no. 1 (2012): 49-63.

4. Julie-Marie Strange, Fatherhood and the British Working Class, 1865-1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015) 37.

5. John Tosh, A Man’s Place: Masculinity and the Middle-Class Home in Victorian England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999,) 49 and 148.

Picture Credits

Example of a Victorian chatelaine: Wikimedia Commons/Collection of Auckland Museum Tāmaki Paenga Hira, Z82 

Children opening Christmas crackers, illustration on a Victorian Christmas card: Wikimedia Commons