For children, Christmas means Advent calendars, Nativity scenes, and a fir tree. For adults, Christmas brings office parties and cozy notions of home: a tartan throw, a wreath on the door, decorations handed down through generations. With the emergence of technology and as religion’s influence wanes, yuletide magic somehow steadfastly remains.
These Anglo-Saxon Christmas traditions date back to the Victorians—and particularly to a literary event: the publication, in December 1844, of a book by Charles Dickens. Titled A Christmas Carol, the novella was both a ghost story about giving and an old man’s epiphany on mortality and the meaning of life. Over the days that followed, lines of people snaked out of bookstores. By Christmas Eve, the first edition was sold out.
Around the same time, Queen Victoria’s husband, Prince Albert, brought a beautiful tradition westward. Born and raised in Germany, where Christmas trees had been popular since the 16th century, Albert set up a grand conifer in the royal household. When a drawing of the royal family gathered around the tree was published in The Illustrated London News, in 1848, the country’s dukes, earls, counts, and marquesses followed suit.
Over time, the Christmas tree evolved from modest tabletop displays to towering affairs adorned with gilded apples, paper angels, and nut-shaped glass ornaments. The industrial age was on and factories were soon churning out tinsel garlands and mercury-glass figurines for the middle class.
In 1888, when George Eastman introduced the first handheld box camera, it made for a perfect storm: families across England could document their festivities to share with friends and relatives. And so the snowy Christmas aesthetic was imprinted on popular consciousness.
A lone Santa Claus ambling through the streets of Oslo; workers in Rickmansworth producing boxes of Christmas crackers; a little girl intensely eyeing an elaborate doll house—the new book A Very Vintage Christmas looks at eight decades of imagery from around the world, beginning in 1900. Though some of the pictures date back 120 years, most of them could have been taken yesterday. —Elena Clavarino
Elena Clavarino is a Senior Editor at air mail
