It’s a typical seasonal chorus: “Christmas simply isn’t prefer it was once.”
This isn’t a brand new criticism. Historical past exhibits that Christmas traditions are simply as topic to vary as some other facet of human societies, and when customs change, there are all the time some who want they may flip again the clock.
Within the 1830s, the English solicitor William Sandys compiled a bunch of examples of Britons bemoaning the transformation of Christmas customs from earlier eras. Sandys himself was particularly involved in regards to the decline of public caroling, noting the apply appeared “to get extra uncared for yearly.” He anxious that this “neglect” was indicative of a wider British tendency to watch Christmas with much less “hospitality and harmless revelry” within the nineteenth century than prior to now.
But the nineteenth century additionally produced new vacation customs. The truth is, most of the new Christmas practices in Sandy’s time went on to develop into established traditions themselves—and at the moment are the topic of nostalgia and fretted over by those that concern their decline. Take, for instance, the standard Christmas card. My research exhibits that these printed seasonal greetings borrowed from the customs of the previous to maneuver Christmas into a brand new age.
A British custom
Annual gross sales and circulation of Christmas playing cards have been in decline for the reason that Nineties. Laments over the potential “demise” of the Christmas card have been particularly vocal in the United Kingdom, the place the mailing of Christmas greetings to household and pals by way of printed playing cards was lengthy thought of to be a necessary component of a “British Christmas.”
Certainly, historians Martin Johnes and Mark Connelly each argue that throughout the 20th century the Christmas card was viewed as just as essential part of Britain’s distinctive mix of vacation traditions as kids hanging stockings on the finish of their beds, Christmas pantomimes, and the consuming of turkey and Brussels sprouts.
But, as these similar historians are fast to notice, at one time Britons did none of these items at Christmas. Every of those traditions turned a component of the customary British Christmas solely in the course of the second half of the nineteenth century and the early a long time of the twentieth.
This makes all of them comparatively new additions to the nation’s vacation customs, particularly when considered in gentle of Christmas’ greater than 2,000-year historical past.
Industrial revolution and Christmas playing cards
The customized of mailing printed Christmas playing cards started in the middle decades of the 19th century and was a product of the economic revolution. It was made inexpensive by new improvements in printing and papermaking and extra environment friendly modes of transportation such because the railway.
The event of this new custom was additionally facilitated by Parliament’s introduction of the Penny Put up in 1840, which allowed Britons to mail letters to any handle in the UK for the small worth of a penny stamp.
Most historians date the Christmas card’s arrival to 1843, the identical 12 months during which Charles Dickens revealed A Christmas Carol.
In that 12 months, the inventor and civil servant Henry Cole commissioned the artist John Callcott Horsley to design a card to assist Cole deal with his Christmas correspondence extra effectively.
Printed variations of Cole’s card have been additionally made accessible on the market, however the excessive worth of 1 shilling apiece left them exterior the bounds of affordability for many of the Victorian inhabitants.
Cole’s experiment, nevertheless, impressed different printers to supply comparable however extra inexpensive Christmas playing cards. The usage of these cheaper playing cards started to unfold within the 1850s and had established itself as a vacation custom by the ultimate a long time of the century.
A Victorian invention?
Whereas the Christmas card might have appeared like a completely new invention to Victorian senders and receivers, the primary Christmas card’s design was really influenced by different, older British vacation traditions.
As historians Timothy Larsen and the late Neil Armstrong have demonstrated, Christmas’ standing as a longtime vacation meant that new Christmas customs developed during the 19th century wanted to attach with, complement or change already current traditions. The Christmas card was no exception to this recorded sample.
In 1843, many Britons bemoaned the disappearance of a variety of “Old English” Christmas customs. Foremost amongst these have been traditions of Christmas “hospitality,” together with Christmas and New Yr’s visiting, when household, pals and neighbors went to one another’s houses to drink toasts and supply greatest needs for the vacation and the approaching 12 months.
Students argue common perception in these traditions trusted a mix of recalled actuality and constructed fictions. Foremost among the many latter have been the favored stories depicting “old English hospitality” at Christmas by the American author Washington Irving, revealed within the 1820s. The truth is, Britons often invoked Irving’s accounts of Christmas on the fictional nation home, Bracebridge Corridor, when debating the altering character of their nation’s Christmas observances.
No matter these “outdated” customs’ historic actuality, they nonetheless got here to characteristic prominently in discussions concerning the supposed disappearance of a spread of neighborhood stage Christmas observances, together with feasting, caroling and public acts of charity.
All of those, it was believed, have been endangered in an more and more city Britain characterised by class tensions, heightened population mobility and mass anonymity.
A union of the outdated and the brand new
Whereas it’s unclear whether or not these ongoing debates impressed Cole’s resolution to fee his 1843 Christmas card, the illustration Horsley designed for him alluded to them instantly.
The cardboard contains a household framed by trestles adorned with holly and mistletoe, accompanied on both facet by charitable scenes involving the feeding and clothes of the poor. The middle of the cardboard—and the symbolic middle of Horsley’s Christmas imaginative and prescient—nevertheless, is the household of three clearly outlined generations having fun with a collective feast, together with the traditional English Christmas pudding.
They face the viewer, their glasses raised in a toast, instantly above a banner wishing them a “A Merry Christmas and a Pleased New Yr.” The central visible imagery of the cardboard—as a “paper customer” to the house of the recipient—replicates the social act of toasting related to the older customized of vacation visits.
The truth is, Horsley’s design invoked most of the similar parts featured in Irving’s tales. This isn’t shocking, provided that in later life Horsley recalled the impression of studying Irving’s depictions of the “Christmas at Bracebridge Corridor” as a boy, and the way he and his sister Fanny had been “decided to do our greatest to maintain Christmas in such a notable vogue.”
Refashioning ‘outdated English hospitality’
Early Christmas cards favored comparable imagery related to the “Outdated English” Christmas of carolers, acts of charity, the taking part in of nation sports activities, video games reminiscent of blindman’s bluff, copious greenery, feasting and the toasting of Christmas and the New Yr.
These Christmas playing cards have been thus novel, industrial merchandise adorned with the imagery of British Christmases previous.
The event, and supreme triumph, of the Christmas card in Victorian Britain demonstrates how nostalgia was channeled into invention. The Christmas card didn’t revitalize the traditions of Christmas and New Yr’s visiting; it supplied a paper substitute for them.
Industrial manufacturing and transportation reworked the bodily customer right into a paper proxy, permitting extra individuals to go to many extra of the houses of others in the course of the vacation season than they ever would have been in a position to in individual.
The will to carry on to at least one component of an older, supposedly declining Christmas custom thus proved instrumental in serving to to create a brand new vacation custom within the midst of unprecedented adjustments within the character of communications and social relations.
Right now, an analogous context of social and technological adjustments has precipitated some to predict the “death” of the Christmas card. The historical past of the nineteenth century suggests, nevertheless, that ought to the custom die, no matter replaces it’s going to thrive by drawing selectively on the Christmas customs of the previous.
Christopher Ferguson is an affiliate professor of historical past at Auburn University.
This text is republished from The Conversation below a Inventive Commons license. Learn the original article.