Modern Marketing of the Victorian Christmas

Abstract

The Punch contributor who had thought that “every little author” was preparing a 5s. Christmas book in 1846 would have been overwhelmed by the greater flood of Christmas materials that inundated the market a few decades later when a variety of gift items were to be had for a range of prices.¹ An 1861 entry in Thackeray’s “Roundabout Papers” exposed a writer’s subsequent appreciation for the annual packaging of Christmas cheer:

We have all admired the illustrated papers, and noted how boisterously jolly they become at Christmas time. What wassail bowls, robin-redbreasts, waits, snow landscapes, bursts of Christmas song! And then to think that these festivities are prepared months before—that these Christmas pieces are prophetic! How kind of artists and poets to devise the festivities beforehand, and serve them pat at the proper time!²