It may feel like Christmas is already over – after all, the presents are wrapped, you’re still finding bits of glitter everywhere, and the last Christmas day food shop is being put together.

But for the Victorian, and for many generations before that, Christmas was just getting started!

So I thought I’d take you on a quick Victorian Christmas adventure! After all, so much that we love about Christmas today isn’t that old. The traditions that we think go back to the medieval time are actually relatively modern.

Here’s a short (and not exhaustive list!) of Christmas Victorian inventions:

• Christmas trees! The tradition of bringing a live tree into the house (which when you think about it, is kind of weird) was transferred to England from Germany by Queen Victoria’s husband, Albert
• Decorating the tree! See above
• Candles/lights on the tree – see above again!
• Having a turkey, or another bird, at the centre of the dining table! A goose was most popular, even though they were expensive. Even relatively well off people joined a subscription club throughout the year, putting in a little each month to ‘earn’ a goose in December
• Plum pudding! The ancestor of today’s Christmas pudding, this was an incredibly rich and sweet dish
• Christmas presents on…Christmas Eve? Yup, Christmas Day was a day for church and good food, so presents were enjoyed the day before
• Christmas cards! With greater spending power came the option to send it on something you’d throw out within days, and artistic styles grew around this super cute, Christmas card style.

This example is a Christmas card, published by C. Goodall & Son, 19th Century, England. Museum no. Buday/1/1/25. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

I hope you have enjoyed a few of these Victorian Christmas traditions, if not all of them. If you haven’t, there’s still plenty of time – the Twelve Days of Christmas don’t end until the 5th January!