Dickens and Christmas

by Lucinda Hawksley

  In nineteenth century Scotland, however, the big seasonal celebration was not Christmas Day or Boxing Day, which were seen as very English celebrations. In Scotland, Hogmanay, on 31 December was most important date of the season. It was usual to celebrate New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day throughout the British Isles, but in Scotland, this was the main celebration. Until the sixteenth century, Christmas had been celebrated widely in Scotland, but with the Reformation of the church, the celebration of Christmas was considered Catholic and the celebrating of it was frowned upon as ‘Popish’. In 1640, an Act passed by the Scottish Parliament made it illegal to celebrate ‘Yule’. Although the Act was repealed in the 1680s, the Presbyterian church made it clear that it considered Christmas a remnant of a Pagan festival, not Christian in origin and not connected with the New Testament. Throughout the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, as people in the rest of the British Isles were becoming obsessed with celebrating Christmas, the fashion for a Dickensian Christmas remained largely uncelebrated in Scotland. A law that made 25 December a public holiday in Scotland was finally passed in 1958.

  Throughout the rest of Britain, it was not until the mid-nineteenth century that Christmas Day was accepted as the most important feast day of the winter calendar, and that change was partly due to the Industrial Revolution. When Britain was still largely an agricultural society, each region of the country celebrated in its own way and 25 December wasn’t necessarily the day on which all communities celebrated. Different areas celebrated different aspects of the season, and for many, the celebration was dictated depending on the local workers. For example, in regions where apples were the main crop, wassailing was the principal celebration, and usually happened on or around Twelfth Night. Many agricultural communities celebrated on the first Monday after Twelfth Night, which was known as ‘Plough Monday’. It marked the first day back at work after the twelve days of Christmas, even though most labourers worked throughout the twelve days. Plough Monday was a day on which people danced, sang, collected alms from the wealthy and ate a special ‘Plough Pudding’. As the Industrial Revolution took hold, and increasing numbers of people moved away from working on the land to working in the cities, many of the old country traditions started to die out. This helped the focus shift from the twelve days of Christmas to celebrating only on 25 December.

  The Factory Act of 1833 named Christmas Day and Good Friday as the two days in the year (other than Sundays) on which factory workers were permitted the day off work, but not all employees were made aware of their rights – and not all employers chose to adhere to the new law. It was also common for workers to choose to work on 25 December, because they preferred to take 1 January as a holiday instead. Although it became an accepted tradition in the Victorian age to give presents at Christmas, for centuries it had been more common to give and receive gifts at New Year. In The Chimes, his second Christmas book, Dickens makes reference to this:

  ‘The streets were full of motion, and the shops were decked out gaily. The New Year, like an Infant Heir to the whole world, was waited for, with welcomes, presents, and rejoicings. There were books and toys for the New Year, glittering trinkets for the New Year, dresses for the New Year, schemes of fortune for the New Year; new inventions to beguile it.’

  ‘Lavish profusion is in the shops: particularly in the articles of currants, raisins, spices, candied peel, and moist sugar. An unusual air of gallantry and dissipation is abroad; evinced in an immense bunch of mistletoe hanging in the greengrocer’s shop doorway, and a poor little Twelfth Cake, culminating in the figure of a Harlequin – such a very poor little Twelfth Cake, that one would rather called it a Twentyfourth Cake or a Forty-eighth Cake – to be raffled for at the pastrycook’s, terms one shilling per member.’

  Charles Dickens, The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870)

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Traditions – Old and New

  ‘Christmas was close at hand, in all his bluff and hearty honesty; it was the season of hospitality, merriment, and open-heartedness; the old year was preparing, like an ancient philosopher, to call his friends around him, and amidst the sound of feasting and revelry to pass gently and calmly away. Gay and merry was the time; and right gay and merry were at least four of the numerous hearts that were gladdened by its coming. And numerous indeed are the hearts to which Christmas brings a brief season of happiness and enjoyment. How many families, whose members have been dispersed and scattered far and wide, in the restless struggles of life, are then reunited, and meet once again in that happy state of companionship and mutual goodwill, which is a source of such pure and unalloyed delight; and one so incompatible with the cares and sorrows of the world, that the religious belief of the most civilised nations, and the rude traditions of the roughest savages, alike number it among the first joys of a future condition of existence, provided for the blessed and happy! How many old recollections, and how many dormant sympathies, does Christmas time awaken!’

  Charles Dickens The Pickwick Papers (1837)

  The most famous of Dickens’s early Christmas stories appears in The Pickwick Papers, which was serialised between March 1836 and October 1837. All of Dickens’s novels were published in serial form, as either weekly or monthly instalments in magazines. They were only published as complete novels once the final instalment had been published. Dickens did not write them as complete novels and then serialise them; he wrote to a deadline every week or month. The exception to this was his Christmas Books, all of which were short novellas, not novels, and they were published as books. In The Pickwick Papers, on Christmas Eve, Mr Wardle sits with his friends by the fireside at Dingley Dell and relates ‘The Story of the Goblins who stole a Sexton’. The sexton of the title is a grumpy individual named Gabriel Grub, who needs reforming, just as Ebenezer Scrooge does in A Christmas Carol. Mr Wardle’s story begins with a description of Gabriel as a mean-spirited old man who despises Christmas:

  ‘A little before twilight, one Christmas Eve, Gabriel shouldered his spade, lighted his lantern, and betook himself towards the old churchyard; for he had got a grave to finish by next morning, and, feeling very low, he thought it might raise his spirits, perhaps, if he went on with his work at once. As he went his way, up the ancient street, he saw the cheerful light of the blazing fires gleam through the old casements, and heard the loud laugh and the cheerful shouts of those who were assembled around them; he marked the bustling preparations for next day’s cheer, and smelled the numerous savoury odours consequent thereupon, as they steamed up from the kitchen windows in clouds. All this was gall and wormwood to the heart of Gabriel Grub; and when groups of children bounded out of the houses, tripped across the road, and were met, before they could knock at the opposite door, by half a dozen curly-headed little rascals who crowded round them as they flocked upstairs to spend the evening in their Christmas games, Gabriel smiled grimly, and clutched the handle of his spade with a firmer grasp, as he thought of measles, scarlet fever, thrush, whooping-cough, and a good many other sources of consolation besides.

  ‘In this happy frame of mind, Gabriel strode along, returning a short, sullen growl to the good-humoured greetings of such of his neighbours as now and then passed him, until he turned into the dark lane which led to the churchyard.’

  By the end of the story he is ‘an altered man’. Embarrassed about the way he has lived his life until now, he leaves the village to make a new start amongst people who know nothing about the grumpy man he was before.

  In The Pickwick Papers, Dickens also gives an evocative description of a late Regency Christmas party, the types of parties John and Elizabeth Dickens and their young children would have attended. When Dickens writes about Mr Pickwick playing Blind Man’s Buff, he might be recalling a scene he remembered from childhood:

  ‘Mr Pickwick, blinded ... with a silk handkerchief, falling up against the wall, and scrambling into corners, and going through all the mysteries of blindman’s buff, with the utmost relish for the game, until at last he
caught one of the poor relations, and then had to evade the blind-man himself, which he did with a nimbleness and agility that elicited the admiration and applause of all beholders.’

  He would later write a similarly joyous scene in A Christmas Carol to describe Mr Fezziwig’s party.

  As a child, Charles Dickens had loved the work of the American writer, Washington Irving, who had famously written about Christmas. Washington Irving had lived in England in the 1810s and early 1820s. His sister, Sarah, had married an American who took British nationality and they set up home in Birmingham in England. While staying with them, Irving became fascinated by a nearby Jacobean mansion, Aston Hall, which was then being leased to James Watt, the son of the famous Scottish inventor. Under the pseudonym of Geoffrey Crayon, Irving published a series of short stories The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent, which included Rip van Winkle (1819 and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1820), both stories known to the young Charles Dickens.

  Irving then wrote a series of stories inspired by Aston Hall (but named Bracebridge Hall and relocated to Yorkshire). In The Keeping of Christmas at Bracebridge Hall (1822), Irving mourned how the Christmas season, in Britain and America, was becoming less important in the eyes of the general populace, and that the old customs were falling out of fashion. Irving’s story was intended to celebrate the ‘old English’ ways of marking Christmas, and to record some of the traditions for future generations.

  The Keeping of Christmas at Bracebridge Hall begins with the words:

  ‘Nothing in England exercises a more delightful spell over my imagination, than the lingerings of the holiday customs and rural games of former times … I regret to say that they are daily growing more and more faint, being gradually worn away by time – but still more obliterated by modern fashion.’

  Irving was nostalgic for an old-fashioned English Christmas that had once ‘brought the peasant and the peer together, and blended all ranks in one warm generous flow of joy and kindness’, and he railed against the ‘modern refinement’ which had wrought havoc ‘among the hearty old holiday customs … Many of the games and ceremonials of Christmas have entirely disappeared’.

  ‘Of all the old festivals, however, that of Christmas awakens the strongest and most heartfelt associations. There is a tone of solemn and sacred feeling that blends with our conviviality, and lifts the spirit to a state of hallowed and elevated enjoyment. The services of the church about this season are extremely tender and inspiring. They dwell on the beautiful story of the origin of our faith, and the pastoral scenes that accompanied its announcement. They gradually increase in fervour and pathos during the season of Advent, until they break forth in full jubilee on the morning that brought peace and good will to men. I do not know a grander effect of music on the moral feelings, than to hear the full choir and the pealing organ performing a Christmas anthem in a cathedral, and filling every part of the vast pile with triumphant harmony.

  ‘It is a beautiful arrangement, also, derived from days of yore, that this festival, which commemorates the announcement of the religion of peace and love, has been made the season for gathering together of family connections, and drawing closer again those bands of kindred hearts, which the cares and pleasures and sorrows of the world are continually operating to cast loose: of calling back the children of a family, who have launched forth in life, and wandered widely asunder, once more to assemble about the paternal hearth, that rallying-place of the affections, there to grow young and loving again among the endearing mementos of childhood.

  ‘There is something in the very season of the year that gives a charm to the festivity of Christmas ... in the depth of winter, when nature lies despoiled of every charm, and wrapped in her shroud of sheeted snow, we turn for our gratifications to moral sources. The dreariness and desolation of the landscape, the short gloomy days and darksome nights, while they circumscribe our wanderings, shut in our feelings also from rambling abroad, and make us more keenly disposed for the pleasure of the social circle. Our thoughts are more concentrated: our friendly sympathies more aroused. We feel more sensibly the charm of each by dependence on each other for enjoyment. Heart calleth unto heart; and we draw our pleasures from the deep wells of loving-kindness, which lie in the quiet recesses of our bosoms; and which, when resorted to, furnish forth the pure element of domestic felicity.

  ‘The pitchy gloom without makes the heart dilate on entering the room filled with the glow and warmth of the evening fire. The ruddy blaze diffuses an artificial summer and sunshine through the room, and lights up each countenance in a kindlier welcome. Where does the honest face of hospitality expand into a broader and more cordial smile where is the shy glance of love more sweetly eloquent than by the winter fireside? and as the hollow blast of wintry wind rushes through the hall, claps the distant door, whistles about the casement, and rumbles down the chimney, what can be more grateful than that feeling of sober and sheltered security, with which we look round upon the comfortable chamber and the scene of domestic hilarity?’

  Washington Irving, The Keeping of Christmas at Bracebridge Hall (1822)

  The Keeping of Christmas at Bracebridge Hall, which was published when Charles Dickens was ten, was very popular and achieved the author’s aim of making his readers nostalgic for an old-fashioned Christmas. It was this spirit of aiming to bring back the old Christmas traditions, and railing against the cynical modernity of the current era that would also make both the Christmas story in The Pickwick Papers and A Christmas Carol so popular.

  Irving’s narrator takes a stagecoach to Yorkshire, where he has planned to spend Christmas at a country inn. Amongst his fellow companions are three schoolboys, released from boarding school for the holidays and whose excited conversation the narrator enjoys listening to, while watching the countryside go past the window:

  ‘Perhaps the impending holiday might have given a more than usual animation to the country, for it seemed to me as if everybody was in good looks and good spirits. Game, poultry, and other luxuries of the table, were in brisk circulation in the villages; the grocers, butchers, and fruiterers shops were thronged with customers. The housewives were stirring briskly about, putting their dwellings in order; and the glossy branches of holly, with their bright red berries, began to appear at the windows.’

  On Christmas Eve, as the coach arrives at the inn, which is brightened by festive decorations and lit by a roaring fire, the narrator bumps into an old friend, Frank Bracebridge, with whom he ‘had once travelled on the Continent’.

  Frank Bracebridge invites him to stay at his father’s country house:

  ‘As we approached the house, we heard the sound of music, and now and then a burst of laughter, from one end of the building. This, Bracebridge said, must proceed from the servants’ hall, where a great deal of revelry was permitted, and even encouraged, by the squire, throughout the twelve days of Christmas, provided everything was done conformably to ancient usage. Here were kept up the old games of hoodman blind, shoe the wild mare, hot cockles, steal the white loaf, bob apple, and snap dragon: the Yule log and Christmas candle were regularly burnt, and the mistletoe, with its white berries, hung up, to the imminent peril of all the pretty housemaids. So intent were the servants upon their sports, that we had to ring repeatedly before we could make our selves heard … The mistletoe is still hung up in farmhouses and kitchens at Christmas, and the young men have the privilege of kissing the girls under it, plucking each time a berry from the bush. When the berries are all plucked, the privilege ceases.’

  Throughout the narrator’s stay, Frank’s father, ‘the squire’, is at great pains to tell his guest about the customs they enjoy and which he encourages all his tenants to celebrate. The squire bemoans the fact that so many of the traditions are being ignored and, he believes, this is making their time a more selfish and unkind age:

  ‘The squire went on to lament the deplorable decay of the games and amusements which were once prevalent at this season among the lower orders … “Our old
games and local customs,” said he, “had a great effect in making the peasant fond of his home, and the promotion of them by the gentry made him fond of his lord. They made the times merrier, and kinder, and better … The nation” continued he, “is altered; we have almost lost our simple true-hearted peasantry.”’

  One of the squire’s greatest delights was in the wassail bowl and its customs:

  ‘The Wassail Bowl was sometimes composed of ale instead of wine; with nutmeg, sugar, toast, ginger, and roasted crabs [crab apples]; in this way the nut-brown beverage is still prepared in some old families, and round this mighty bowl. Having raised it to his lips, with a hearty wish of a merry Christmas to all present, he sent it brimming round the board, for every one to follow his example, according to the primitive style; pronouncing it “the ancient fountain of good-feeling, where all hearts met together.” There was much laughing and rallying as the honest emblem of Christmas joviality circulated, and was kissed rather coyly by the ladies …’

  CHAPTER SIX

  ‘Ring in the New’