In 1843, Henry Cole commissioned an artist to design a card for Christmas, it had a drawing and a message. At first they were very expensive, at 1 whole shilling, but once Queen Victoria encouraged her children to make their own cards, the idea caught on. Once the colour printing press was invented and more widely used, the price of cards began to drop. By the 1880's, the sending of cards became popular and in 1880, there were 11.5 million Christmas cards. The Royal Family can also be thanked for the Christmas Trees we have today.
The medieval tradition of using evergreens in houses in the winter months continued into the Victorian era however the way this was done was adapted to become more sophisticated and elegant. Uniformity, elegance and order was the Victorian way and house wives were given guidance as to where to place these evergreens in magazines such as Family Magazine. Prince Albert was German in origin and one German tradition is to bring in a whole tree and decorate it, making it the centre piece of your decorations. The Upper Classes wanted to replicate the Royal Family and so began to bring in trees and eventually it filtered down to the Middle Classes.
A Tudor Tradition that the Victorians adapted was the Mince Pie. Mince Pies were usually made with minced meat but mixes without meat began to gain popularity and so the Mince Pies we have today, are courtesy of the Victorians. We can also thank the Victorians for all the left over turkey you end up with until the middle of January as it was them who moved away from traditional meats such as Lamb and Beef and decided on Turkey as it was the perfect sized animal for a middle class family. Now, families are smaller and so we end up with lots and lots and lots of left over Turkey meat!
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