December marches on, and brings more Blogmas goodness with it. I love the holiday season, and Blogmas is one of my favourite parts of it. Yes, it is slightly difficult to plan ahead and make sure that there is a post for you to read every day, but the feedback makes it worth it! There are a few posts that tend to be more popular than others, though. Between last year and this year, it has become clear- everyone seems to love royal Christmas history. (As do I!) So, this is a royal Christmas roundup, with my most popular posts and a few others!
Royal Christmases Throughout the Centuries
One of my series last year focused on different Christmas and holiday traditions throughout the centuries in England/the UK. I’m hoping to expand that series in December 2020 and branch out to different royal families, but the current posts from last year are still doing really well.
This is my Tudor and Stuart Christmas history post. I think in some ways it is more familiar than we realise, and also very different. The slow change from the medieval to the early modern saw the production and public face of Christmas change, in a way that most of us don’t associate with the holidays now. And what exactly does costumes and artwork have to do with it all??
And now for the Georgian and Victorian Christmas traditions! Christmas for the Georgians was quite a different affair than anything we would expect- gambling debts, anyone? Fascinating, nevertheless. However, the Victorians is where we really start to dig in. Although many traditions have been attributed to Victoria and Albert, many were started before them and they simply popularised them.
And finally, the Windsors we know and love now! The Windsor dynasty has seen a far bit of change. From its birth during the First World War under George V to the 60+ years of Queen Elizabeth II, the world has changed as we know it. However, QEII has solidified some family traditions in the last two to three decades, and it is quite fun for royal watchers to pay attention.
What Should You Read?
We are now in the peak holiday season, with work still in full swing, along with work, friend, and family parties. Then you factor in baking, cooking, cleaning, packing, wrapping, and who knows what else, and it is a mess. I am a big fan of making sure to take a few moments for yourself every day, even if it is only 10 minutes of reading before bed. I’ve compiled a list of my favourite royal Christmas history books for you! They are perfect to keep you in the festive mood, give you dreams about lavish and fantastical feasts, and tell you a bit more about the royals that interest us all. As they are written by fairly dedicated historians, I think that they will absolutely appeal to any royal history buff!
Fun Royal Christmas History Facts
I will have a few shorter #RoyalChristmasHistory chats throughout the holiday period, and I’ve discovered a lot through them! (I’ve also had a ball “meeting” more of you and growing this lovely little community of mine.) I’ve been spurred on to keep reading and researching, and I thought I would share the most fun and interesting royal Christmas history facts I’ve discovered thus far.
(** I apologise for missing the last #RoyalChristmasHistory chat- I ended up taking Agnes to the vet, and work was a little hairy. I promise there will be a few shorter chats throughout the holidays.)
-Did you know that Tsar Nicholas II composed a Christmas hymn? (I had no idea he was musically inclined at all)
-In the Interregnum period under Oliver Cromwell, Christmas was effectively… cancelled. The Puritanical leader and the government was horrified by the excesses and lavish feasts of the traditional holiday period, and banned any sort of special Christmas celebration. However, as you can imagine, the old traditions returned with Charles II, aka the Merry Monarch.
-Christmas was actually quite a sad time for Mary, Queen of Scots. She became Queen of Scotland on 14 December at only six days old, when her father (James V) died. And her first husband, Francis II of France, died on 5 December. Still, upon her return to Scotland, she spent 5 merry Christmases at Holyrood, observing many of the traditions.
-Marie Antoinette developed a love of sleigh rides in her childhood in Austria, and encouraged the French court to do the same. While the queen and her ladies loved the rides, Parisians did not. They thought the sleigh rides were foreign and wasteful (like everything else Marie Antoinette did?).
-Queen Alexandra, consort to King Edward VII of Great Britain, released a Christmas gift book in 1908! Composed of her own photographs, it was titled Pleasant Recollections, and was sold across the globe. Impressively, she raised significant funds for over thirty different charities!
What is your favourite royal Christmas history fact?
Cheers,
The Historian
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