The custom of present giving, once a feature of the New Year and Twelfth Night celebrations, was brought forward by general usage to Christmas Eve and Day, with gifts becoming a significant part of the Christmas Tree decoration. By the mid 1850s the German Christmas stocking custom was making its way into the households of England, particularly among poorer families who could not afford to pile gifts high beneath the tree. The Christmas tradition of a Santa Claus to fill the stocking arrived from Holland via America at the same time and within three decades Father Christmas and his stocking was a firm favourite with English families and retail outlets.
The clatter of today's shopping mall and High Street cash registers may drown the gentle tinkle of crystal baubles or silver bells on your traditional Christmas Tree. But 160 years later we can still hear that caring family message of Queen Victoria and her beloved Albert, as they stood in silent wonder around that sparkling tree and marveled with the children at the light from the flickering tapers. And I believe we always shall.
May your holiday, whether you celebrate the light of the Nativity, the light of Hanukkah, or the light of the New Year be "like a dream" and "full of happy wonder"; a blessed time of giving, caring and reconciliation.
Happy Holidays Everyone!
Author's note. I am indebted to Professor Ronald Sutton, Reader in History at Bristol University, for details of Scottish court cases and Charles Dickens quotes. His books The Stations Of The Sun - a history of the ritual year in Britain, and The Rise and Fall of Merrie England - The Ritual Year 1400-1700, (published by Oxford University Press) are valuable and sometimes provocatively controversial reading on the history of England's religious and social customs.
I have now retired to the Isle of Wight. I invite you to share my weekly jottings at Rosemary Lane, my weekly chronicle of the changing seasons and unhurried village life at my country cottage on Wight, my island idyll.
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