The high profile royal adoption of the now anglicised 'Christmas tree' by Prince Albert and the Queen at Windsor Castle in 1841 as a royal symbol of family caring struck an immediate emotional chord in the newly industrialised England at this time of social change, stress and growing spiritual uncertainty. The Queen herself spoke of that first 'family' Christmas as "like a dream", and the Prince wrote to his father of his children being "full of happy wonder at the German Christmas tree and its radiant candles" when they were ushered in to stand in awe before that sparkling tree at Windsor Castle on Christmas Eve.
This was a reinvention of English Christmas by The Queen and Her Prince Consort, expressed in the mood of the day that the emerging middle class and new industrial rich could feel comfortable with in an age marked by radical moral fervor but wracked by religious doubt and appalling social deprivation. With the support of socially aware politicians such as Lord John Russell, writers like Dickens and his fellow journalists in influential magazines like Punch and Illustrated London News, Queen Victoria and her beloved Prince portrayed a new beginning. Together they succeeded in transforming a December workday into a glowing Winter holiday for the family; a blessed time of giving, caring, remembering, and reconciliation.
Illus: Press cartoon of the Royal Family at home
The Prince's Christmas Tree and his Family Christmas became instantly fashionable. Today's 'Traditional English Christmas' was born in a blaze of Christmas Tree lights that Christmas Eve, 1841. By 1850 Charles Dickens was ardently recommending the newly fashionable Christmas Tree custom in the magazine Household Words. He described the tree as lit by 'a multitude of little tapers' and hung with 'books, workboxes, paint-boxes, sweetmeat boxes, peep-show boxes'...'there were tee-to-tums, humming tops, needle-cases, pen-wipers, smelling bottles, conversation cards, bouquest holders; real fruit, made artificially dazzling with gold leaf; imitation apples, pears and walnuts, crammed with surprises'.
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