Have Yourself a Merry Victorian Christmas

Of all the styles of Christmas celebration, Victorian is probably the easiest to emulate. A number of current practices started with Vicky herself, and we have practically a manual in Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol.

A lot of what we find familiar in a Victorian Christmas is down to Prince Albert and Queen Victoria bringing their German heritage and customs to high English society; but I think also the growing prevalence of printed pictures (like the opening illustration), education being more accessible, and also photography really helped Vicky become the trendsetter we now remember her as. If no one published what the Alberts were up to on Christmas, who would know and/or care?

Decoration

The biggest contribution Victoria and Albert made to Christmastime is the Christmas tree. So, imagine, Dear Reader, you're in residence at Buckingham Palace with its 20 ft ceilings; a full grown Silver Fir has arrived from your cousins in Saxe-Coburg, Germany, and your small army of butlers are perched on ladders of various heights attaching candies, and small presents you and your ladies wrapped so delicately earlier; your husband smooths his curled mustache and passes you another orange, firm yet a bit squishy; little Edward runs up to you and clings to your dress tearfully insisting in the innocent-cherub-like manner Victorian children were famous for, that he wants to help Mamma and Pappa decorate the tree. You light a taper and pick him up so he can light one of the many open flame candles attached to the rapidly drying boughs. And then another. And then another until your arms ache and you call for his nurse to make him disappear. Is this tree something of a fire hazard? Oh my word, yes! But it looks awfully pretty!

 Another Victorian tradition still practiced in British homes at the Christmas lunch are crackers.

The idea is you pull on either end with the person sitting next to you and with a bang the cracker opens up to reveal prizes inside. So, actually, this picture isn't accurate: the paper crowns are within the cracker and if you don't immediately don yours, how can you possibly be celebrating Christmas? Of course, these loud noises, and silly toys are much more suited for the children and lower classes, but it is fun to see the Prime Minister Lord Melbourne jump with fright.

Menu

You glide in your gigantic skirts to the banquet hall and admire the gleaming silver cutlery laid with precision against the gold-rimmed white bone china and the holly berry and ivy centerpieces that ensure no one can see each other across the table. Chivers, another butler, is aligning the chairs with a ruler; you've told him, in your steely yet genteel way, that if anything is out of place you will not be amused.

Bob Cratchett's Christmas dinner, once Scrooge pitched in, is extremely familiar: Roast goose, stuffing, Duchesse potatoes, glazed carrots, plum pudding with hard sauce, and punch. The lack of electrical kitchen appliances would have made the potatoes, at least, a pain in the arse.

Of course, for Queen Victoria, it wouldn't do to eat just the mundane goose. The menu of her last Christmas included turtle soup, turbot and fried sole, turkey with chipolatas, roast beef, a chine of pork (whatever that means), asparagus with hollandaise sauce (which sounds rather nice, actually), and, of course, the plum pudding (which also sounds rather painful to make without modern kitchen equipment).

Chipolatas

For myself, I would stick with the goose, though keep in mind you will end up with buckets- literally buckets- of fat coming from that bird. This recipe from the BBC should see you good and clear with a delicious bird and cider gravy. Use the fat to roast your potatoes in.

Appropriate Gifts

Gift giving is tricky, to say the least; we're talking about a culture that used flowers to send secret messages to one another. Get a lady you feel meh about the wrong gift, and the whole town might think you're engaged by boxing day. From the female perspective, if you give a gift to a man you are not related to, well dear, that just looks rather desperate. And loose.

Some suggestions for men:

• A shaving kit (ironically back in style)
• A tobacco pouch
•  A gold pen
• A handkerchief embroidered with a secret message to end to the oppression of women
• An addition to his collection of butterflies
• A pistol for when he "demands satisfaction"
• A jaunty fez cap to go with his smoking jacket

Is it an antique? Or newly manufactured in China?

 For Women:

• Scented soaps
• Perfume from France
• Knitting needles*
• Decorative hair combs
• A new corset
• Opera glasses
• Calling Card Case
• Her dead mother's hair fashioned into earrings
• Post-mortem photography
• Smelling salts
• A fainting couch
• Arsenic

*Unless you have been explicitly told that these would make a good present Do. Not. Gift. These.

Soundtrack

I actually started to do some research on this, and then asked myself: who am I kidding?

There's only one collection of music to listen to for this, and it's The Nutcracker