Charles Dickens is often mistakenly credited with inventing modern Christmas. But his writing did give us a unique insight into the ways both ordinary and elite Victorians celebrated the festive season.
Writing in his magazine, Household Words, in December 1850, Dickens described the gifts and decorations on a typical Christmas tree in a middle-class household.
There were rosy cheeked dolls, hiding behind the green leaves … there were tambourines, books, work-boxes, paint-boxes, sweetmeat-boxes, peep-show boxes, all kinds of boxes … there were teetotums, humming-tops, needle-cases, pen-wipers, smelling-bottles, conversation cards, bouquet-holders … imitation apples, pears, and walnuts, crammed with surprises; in short, as a pretty child, before me, delightedly whispered to another pretty child, her bosom friend, ‘There was everything, and more.’
