Throughout her life, whether as child or mother, Victoria loved celebrating Christmas, which she described as a 'most dear happy time'. With nine children, her Christmases became great family occasions and many of the royal Christmas traditions were described in her personal diaries and in the contemporary media.
These included decorated trees, the sending of cards (which was encouraged by the introduction of the penny post during Victoria's reign), a lavish celebratory meal, and gifts to the poor. Over the years of her long reign such traditions were taken up by people throughout the country and the Empire.
Introduced by George III's wife Queen Charlotte, the decoration and 'lighting up' of the Christmas tree (a German tradition) was a central feature of Princess Victoria's childhood Christmases. In her journal for Christmas Eve 1832, the 13-year-old Princess wrote: "After dinner...we then went into the drawing-room near the dining-room...There were two large round tables on which were placed two trees hung with lights and sugar ornaments. All the presents being placed round the trees...
"Mamma gave me a little lovely pink bag which she had worked with a little sachet likewise done by her; a beautiful little opal brooch and earrings, books, some lovely prints, a pink satin dress and a cloak lined with fur. Aunt Sophia gave me a dress which she worked herself, and Aunt Mary a pair of amethyst earrings...We then went to my room where I had arranged Mamma's table.
"I gave Mamma a white bag which I had worked, a collar and a steel chain for Flora; Aunt Sophia a pair of turquoise earrings; Lehzen (her governess) a little white and gold pincushion and a pin with two little gold hearts hanging to it... Mamma then took me up into my bedroom with all the ladies. There was my new toilet table with a white muslin cover over pink, and all my silver things standing on it with a fine new looking-glass. I stayed up until half past nine."
After her marriage to Prince Albert, Victoria took great care to encourage German Christmas customs to make her husband feel at home, particularly as their own family grew. In 1847, Prince Albert wrote: "I must now seek in the children an echo of what Ernest (his brother) and I were in the old time, of what we felt and thought; and their delight in the Christmas-trees is not less than ours used to be."
He would decorate the trees himself with sweets, wax dolls, strings of almonds and raisins, and candles, which were lit on Christmas Eve for the distribution of presents, relit on Christmas Day, after which the tree was then moved to another room until Twelfth Night.
Royal Christmases followed a pattern at Windsor Castle. During the evening of Christmas Eve, all members of the Royal Household in attendance would be invited to meet the Queen and Prince Albert near a small tree decorated with bonbons, gilded walnuts and little coloured tapers.
Piled round the tree were presents for them, each one carefully tagged with their names written by the Queen: ladies were given small items of jewellery such as lockets and chains, the gentlemen received jewels such as pearl studs or gold waistcoat buttons, and governesses were given books. Everyone was given engravings of the Queen and her family, as well as almanacs, together with sweetmeats such as German gingerbread.
Then it was the Royal Family's turn to give each other gifts (up to 13 presents), with "the children jumping and shouting with joy over their toys and other presents". One courtier remembered: "I never saw more real happiness than the scene of the mother and all her children... It was royalty putting aside its state and becoming in words, acts, and deeds one of ourselves - no forms and not a vestige of ceremony."
The Queen's three sitting rooms had Christmas trees which were so large that they had to be hung from hooks, with some made to appear as if partly covered by snow. The family's tables were, literally, an art form in themselves as contemporary watercolours and photographs depicting the scenes of Christmas tables over the years show.
Victoria and Albert took enormous pains with their presents, and would give each other specially commissioned paintings and small works of art such as an onyx cup, or an inkstand with a frosted silver stag standing on Scotch stones.
The Queen's journal of 1850 describes the scene: 'We all assembled and my beloved Albert first took me to my tree and table, covered by such numberless gifts, really too much, too magnificent'. The presents which delighted Victoria that year included a water colour by Corbould, oil paintings by Mrs Richards and Horsley, four bronzes, and a bracelet designed by Prince Albert which included a miniature of their daughter Princess Louise.
On Christmas Day, there would be a short service with a carol, hymn and traditional feast. Christmas cards (the royal children were encouraged to make their own as gifts) were handed round on Boxing Day, or delivered by a footman. Christmas celebrations at Windsor lasted several days; a dance would take place on New Year's Eve, with trumpets sounding at midnight to welcome in the new year (another German custom).
The English tradition of marking Twelfth Night on January 6th was kept up with plays and music (some by Victoria's favourite living composer, Mendelssohn), a special Twelfth Cake, and a game of grabbing raisins from a dish of burning brandy which would end when someone threw salt on the dish to produce a vivid yellow flame.
With the deaths of her mother the Duchess of Kent and of Prince Albert (only 11 days before Christmas) in 1861, and that of her daughter Princess Alice in 1878 (on the same date as Prince Albert - "the dreadful fourteenth"), Victoria's enjoyment of Christmas was dimmed with sad associations - an "utterly (to me) pleasureless time" - but eventually returned.
She now spent her Christmases at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight. Surrounded by her children, grandchildren, courtiers and their families, she continued to supervise the erection of Christmas trees and tableaux vivants (living pictures) entertainments, and the distribution of presents for up to 300 servants each Christmas.
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A Christmas card from Victorian times showing two Christmas trees, a tradition begun by Queen Charlotte and much loved by Queen Victoria |
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As a devout Christian, and a monarch with a social conscience, Victoria demonstrated her concern for others at Christmas (and at other times) throughout her life. In 1836 she visited a gypsy camp near where she was staying for Christmas and persuaded her mother to send food, blankets and fuel: "their being assisted makes me quite merry and happy today, for yesterday night when I was safe and happy at home in that cold night and today when it snowed so and everything looked white, I felt unhappy and grieved to think that our poor gypsy friends should perish and shiver from want".
By tradition, new year bounty was distributed to seven or eight hundred poor of the town of Windsor: beef, potatoes, half a ton of plum puddings, a ton of bread, coal, fifteen hundredweight of blankets, and scarlet cloaks would be distributed at Windsor Castle. Throughout their marriage, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert also presented trees to schools and barracks where children's parties were being held.
During the Boer War in 1899, the 80-year-old Queen broke with tradition to stay at Windsor in order to host a Christmas tea for the wives and families of soldiers out in South Africa. On December 26, Victoria wrote in her journal: "All the women and children trooped in, and after looking at the tree they all sat down to tea at two very long tables, below the tree. Everyone helped to serve them, including my family, old and young, and my ladies and gentlemen.
"I was rolled up and down round the tables, after which I went away for a short while to have my own tea, returning when the tree was beginning to be stripped, handing myself many of the things to the wives and dear little children...there were some babies of a few weeks and months old...It was a very touching sight, when one thinks of the poor husbands and fathers, who are all away, and some of whom may not return. They seemed all very much pleased."
Christmas for Queen Victoria was always more than trees, presents, cards and lavish food; it was an opportunity to celebrate family life and to share her good fortune with others - to cherish and uphold the simple spirit of Christmas itself.
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