Christmas in Georgian England Included Christmas Trees and Turgoosen Pies

I am equally amused and frustrated by the annual kerfuffle over American holiday traditions. Amused because I can see humor in the absurd, and frustrated because I hear so many people defending the sanctity of particular Christmas traditions with no idea of their actual provenance.

So I am always fascinated to learn more about Christmas traditions in previous centuries. I had read many years ago that the Christmas tree was introduced into England by the German-born Prince Albert. While I had known that, by Albert's time, England had already been importing its royalty from various German states for a century, I assumed that the popularity of the young royal couple allowed the Prince Consort to introduce innovations in a way that his predecessors had not.

As it turns out, Prince Albert did not introduce the Christmas tree to England. Mass media coverage of the royal Christmas decorations in Victorian times (thanks to the proliferation of literacy and inexpensive magazines) made the Christmas tree popular among the common people for the first time, but the upper classes had been putting up and lighting Christmas trees in their houses since the first decade of the 19th century. The first documented English Christmas tree was set up by Queen Charlotte in Windsor in 1800. So if you read a Regency romance with a Christmas theme, and there is a Christmas tree, it is not an anachronism (assuming it is at an aristocratic gathering).

I was highly amused by this reference to a traditional Yorkshire Christmas pie from 1788. While it is not quite a turducken (because it features a goose rather than a duck nested between the turkey and chicken), it is superior to that modern symbol of excess, because inside the chicken is a pigeon inside a partridge. The pie also includes rabbit and miscellaneous game birds, but they are left outside the matryoshka fowl.

Here is another bit of 18th-century trivia related to German Christmas celebrations. Most Americans of a certain age remember (thanks to Schoolhouse Rock) that the continental army "surprised the Hessians in their lair" after crossing the Delaware "one night" but few realize that night was Christmas. The date chosen was likely deliberate, as one of General Washington's officers wrote "They make a great deal of Christmas in Germany, and no doubt the Hessians will drink a great deal of beer and have a dance to-night. They will be sleepy to-morrow morning."

The assumption about beer-drinking was likely incorrect, as another witness wrote afterward:  "I am certain not a drop of liquor was drunk during the whole night, nor, as I could see, even a piece of bread eaten." The element of surprise was sufficient to carry the day.

The 18th Century Fashion Revolution

The high-waisted, neoclassical women's gowns that we now associate with the Regency actually came into fashion during the last decade of the 18th century, following the French Revolution.

The radicals who toppled the ancien regime in 1789 deliberately rejected the aristocratic fashions of the day. Citoyens wore long cotton pantaloons rather than velvet knee breeches and silk stockings. Citoyennes turned away from stiff corsets and elaborate silk skirts supported by panniers and toward simple cotton gowns with neoclassical lines.

The new gowns were meant to evoke the days of the Roman republic. Ironically, the fashion developed at least in part out of a style that was favored by Marie Antoinette (and called the chemise a la reine in her honor).

French fashions, then as now, were soon adopted in other parts of Europe. The round gown, a garment made from a column of fabric gathered at the neckline and just below the bust, was the height of fashion in 1795. By the end of the decade, it was old-fashioned, replaced by the chemise dress (a more tailored version of the neoclassical gown). You can see several examples of round gowns on my Pinterest board for 1790s fashion.

The evolving political situation in Paris during the 1790s continued to impact fashion. An anti-Jacobin petit-bourgeois militia known as the Muscadins (for the musk cologne they supposedly favored) came to prominence in 1794-5. They wore bright, contrasting colors and coats with large lapels. Their fashion choices were taken up and exaggerated during the Directoire period (1795-1799) by the aristocratic subculture known as the Incroyables (for men) and Merveilleuses (for women).

Diaphanous gowns with scanty or no undergarments were worn in public (and were lampooned by British cartoonists at the time). Men's frock coats and waistcoats were shortened, and lapels became more popular. With the rise of Napoleon at the end of the decade, women's fashions became less risqué. New styles of corset, without boning, were introduced in the early years of the 19th century, after several years of less supportive fashion.

This is not to say that the older fashions disappeared completely. The two very different modes coexisted, with the younger generation preferring the radical new fashions and their conservative parents often clinging to the old. Knee breeches continued to be worn for formal occasions. The specialized costumes for court presentations preserved the longer waistcoats for gentlemen and skirts with hoops for ladies through the Regency (although these garments were only worn for court events).

So, while we are tempted to think of knee breeches and hooped skirts as Georgian and trousers and column dresses as Regency, the reality is that the two eras and two styles overlapped.

'Tis the Season

...for Christmas anthologies. The holidays are a busy time of year, and I have less time to read. For that reason, I really enjoy romance anthologies in December. The short story format allows me to get through the whole emotional arc and reach the happily-ever-after before I forget the backstory and plot set-up.

I am not the only romance reader who feels that way. Publishers always release Christmas-themed romance anthologies, because they sell like Christmas cookies. Regency Historicals are my go-to comfort reads, so those are the type of anthologies I gobble up.

I am currently reading (and enjoying) Christmas in the Duke's Arms, a brand-new anthology with stories by best-selling authors Grace Burrowes, Shana Galen, Carolyn Jewel and Miranda Neville. All three stories take place in the same Nottinghamshire village, home to an inn called The Duke's Arms. They are tied together by having a common setting and some overlapping scenes and secondary characters. In that way, they are reminiscent of the non-Christmas, wedding-themed anthologies that Miranda Neville has done with Katharine Ashe, Caroline Linden and Maya Rodale.

I am beginning to do more reading on my smartphone (although I still prefer paper most of the time). I was delighted to discover today that A Grosvenor Square Christmas is currently free in digital formats. On our first trip to London, my husband and I visited Grosvenor Square, mainly to see the FDR memorial and the mid-20th-century U.S. Embassy building. Other sides of the square are still occupied by the Georgian townhouses that have provided a steady income for the Grosvenor family (the Dukes of Westminster) for more than two centuries. While we were sitting on a park bench enjoying the pleasant surroundings, a gentleman dressed like an Elizabethan town crier came through the square, inviting all and sundry to a free Shakespeare play later that week, courtesy of His Grace, the Duke of Westminster. Alas, our itinerary would not allow us to accept the Duke's kind invitation.

Several years ago, I read Snowy Night with a Stranger, with stories by Jane Feather, Sabrina Jeffries and Julia London. The title says it all -- each story involves strangers who meet due to winter travel disruptions. The stories are not interconnected, but they are delightful. The anthology's theme means that each story contains the meet-cute as well as the falling-in-love part of the romance. There is something especially exciting about a new attraction (and in the pages of a romance novel, we needn't worry that the guy will turn out to be a bad credit risk). While travel is no longer as difficult or hazardous as it was two hundred years ago, most of us can relate to the notion of being stranded over the holidays due to bad weather.

Mary Balogh has written a number of Christmas-themed novels and novellas over the course of her long career. I have enjoyed many of her novels, but of the Christmas-themed stories, I prefer the novellas. They often appear in anthologies with other authors, but I recommend the all-Balogh collection Under the Mistletoe. No one writes about lonely introverts who have difficulty communicating their true feelings like Balogh. This collection includes two stories about married couples who finally learn to communicate and trust.

Happy reading, and Happy Holidays.