vint-agge-xx: SIX WAYS TO CELEBRATE CHRISTMAS LIKE THE VICTORIANS:1. Christmas Cards: We first start
vint-agge-xx: SIX WAYS TO CELEBRATE CHRISTMAS LIKE THE VICTORIANS:1. Christmas Cards: We first started sending Christmas cards in the 1840s when the Penny Post allowed people to send a card to anyone for one penny. The world’s first commercial Christmas card was designed in 1843. 2. Sing Christmas Carols: Victorians revived the centuries-old custom of singing carols to celebrate the season, which included adding new life to the 400-year-old song “The First Noel.” They not only went door to door singing for friends and neighbors, they enjoyed carols in parlors at home and during beautiful candlelit worship services in local sanctuaries. Where there was song, there was sheet music; nicely illustrated pieces with Christmas themes from the early 1900′s are not only beautiful, they are quite collectible today. 3. Decorate a Tree: The German custom of tabletop Christmas trees was taken to new heights by Victorians who placed them on the floor in their homes. They adorned their beloved evergreens with flickering candles, fancy paper Santa’s, glistening angels, chocolate wreaths, gilded apples, silver cornucopias holding treats decorated with tinsel tassels, and dozens of other beautiful ornaments. 4. Hang a Kissing Bough: Before the middle of the 19th century, the kissing bough was the primary piece of decorative greenery in the Victorian home for the holidays. A kissing bough, sometimes called a kissing ball, is a double hoop of evergreen boughs, holly, ivy, apples, pears, ribbons, lighted candles, and other ornaments with streamers going up to a central point and a sprig of mistletoe hung from its center. Victorian Christmas traditions dictate that any woman who wanders under the kissing bough has to allow herself to be kissed. 5. Serve Christmas Pudding: Christmas pudding is a porridge made by boiling beef and mutton combined with raisins, currants, prunes, spices, eggs, breadcrumbs, ale, and spirits. This dish is made in large copper kettles and prepared several weeks before Christmas. Each member of the family takes turns stirring the thick stew and making a wish. It is the traditional end of a Victorian Christmas dinner.Christmas pudding usually contains a silver coin, a ring, button, and thimble. Tradition says the finders of these respective objects will be given the gift of wealth, be married within the year, or be destined for bachelor or spinsterhood.6. Give Children Christmas Crackers: Tom Smith, a London confectioner, designed a tube-shaped object filled with sweets and toys as a special Christmas favor for children. To open this Victorian “Christmas cracker”, you pull on both ends to break the cylinder and create a popping sound. -- source link