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A Straight Dope Classic from Cecil's storehouse of human knowledge
24-Jan-1992
Dear Cecil:
During the recent Christmas season I saw references everywhere to "Victorian"
Christmas celebrations-- house tours, store windows, magazine advertisements, etc. I can
understand people pining for a simpler time, provided we overlook such details as child
labor, Jim Crow laws, and women not having the right to vote. What I wonder is whether
people in Victorian times waxed nostalgic about prior eras. Did they have
"Federalist" Christmases idealizing the late 1700s? For that matter, did the
Federalists have "colonial" Christmases idealizing the late 1600s? Or did prior
generations have enough sense to appreciate their own time? --Stella-Rondo Whitaker,
Washington, DC
Dear Stella-Rondo:
Sense has nothing to do with it. It's just that, to paraphrase musical philosopher Dan
Hicks, you can't miss it if it won't go away. Nostalgia, like Rice Chex, antacid tablets,
and Dan Rather, is a product of modern urban industrial society, which is continually
assaulted by change (AKA progress, for the optimists among us) and where most people have
lost their sense of connection to the land. In a traditional agricultural society there's
nothing to get nostalgic about, since you're still living on the land and yesterday was
pretty much the same as today.
Longing for the past dates from the early 19th century, not long after the start of the
industrial revolution in England. (The word nostalgia wasn't widely applied to said
longing until after World War I, having previously signified a pathological case of
homesickness.) Early promoters of nostalgia included the poet William Wordsworth and the
novelist Sir Walter Scott, whose novel Ivanhoe (1819) launched a fad for
chivalry. Romantic literature appealed to city folk, now a bit disenchanted with urban
life (as the philosophes of a previous generation had not been) and thus inclined to a
sentimental view of the lost joys of nature, childhood, and the past.
Not coincidentally, our modern idea of Christmas also dates from the early 19th century.
Prior to that time celebrations of Christmas varied widely among regions. (In Puritan New
England, Christmas wasn't even a legal holiday until 1856.) Several things changed that,
among them Clement Moore's poem A Visit from St. Nicholas ("'Twas the night
before Christmas . . . ," 1822) and Charles Dickens's A Christmas
Carol (1843). The success of the latter work and the many other Christmas books and
articles Dickens wrote later was greatly amplified by the rise of large-scale commercial
publishing and helped fix the Victorian era as the classic Christmas setting throughout
the English-speaking world. Other contributors to the Victorian Christmas tradition
include Prince Albert, husband of Victoria, who popularized the Christmas tree, previously
a German custom. And we mustn't forget English artist John C. Horsley--in 1843, the same
year A Christmas Carol appeared, he designed the first Christmas card, depicting
a family party with the words "A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to You"
below.
Merchandised sentiment eventually replaced pre-industrial holiday traditions. Victorian
celebrations had some inherent charm, of course. But it was only by dint of constant
repetition in the media that frosted window panes, carolers, top hats and long dresses,
and (in America) fat guys in red suits became "iconic" of Christmas, as we
pop-culturati say. Harmless enough, I suppose. But next time you get the warm fuzzies
watching some Victorian Xmas special on TV, remember you feel that way in part because
you've been trained to.
--CECIL ADAMS
The Straight Dope / Questions or
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