This weekend marked the unofficial beginning of the Yuletide season—both here in the US, with Friday’s kickoff of holiday shopping, and across the pond, with yesterday’s (or today’s, as I’m writing this) Stirring-Up Sunday: the day when English families traditionally make their Christmas puddings. And thus it marks the beginning of an annual tradition here at #MyrtleMondays, too: when I stir up your holiday spirit by filling your inboxes weekly with all things Victorian Christmas! This year we have some familiar classics and some fun new features planned. Let’s get started!
In Cold-Blooded Myrtle, we discover that Myrtle (not to mention her erudite alter-ego) has some Strong Opinions regarding holiday food.
When carolers sing, “Bring us some figgy pudding,” they mean a British pudding—a solid, cakelike pastry made of breadcrumbs, fruit, and sugar steeped in alcohol. It may or may not contain figs or plums, but raisins and currents are definitely traditional.
Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management includes this color plate of recommended holiday dishes, including a most magnificent plum pudding
Plum pudding, figgy pudding, Christmas pudding, whatever you term it, 19th century Christmas wasn’t Christmas without the pud.
This collectible illustration from the 1896 Pears Annual (a holiday magazine produced by English soap company Pears) celebrates the arrival of this most quintessential dish. Charles Green’s painting depicts a Christmas feast of a much earlier age—note the old-fashioned clothing of the diners from three-quarters of a century before. Even the Victorians were nostalgic about Christmas!
Plum pudding was made weeks in advance, to allow the alcohol and other ingredients to become fully… potent. The last Sunday before Advent, known as “Stirring-Up Sunday,” became the traditional day for families to make their puddings. In the Book of Common Prayer, the church service for that Sunday begins, “Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people.” And what better way to get into the faithful spirit of Advent then stirring up some Christmas cheer?
If you want to plan a traditional 19th century holiday feast, you’ll appreciate the guidance and recipes of Isabella Beeton, the guru to whom generations of cooks and housewives have turned for advice since 1861. A bestseller for well over a century, Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management contains all you need to know to cook up the perfect Victorian Christmas dinner. You may consult all of Mrs. Beeton’s recipes at Project Gutenberg at the link above.
If you’re a last-minute cook, she also offers an alcohol-free version:
But the holiday meal only begins—and ends–with the pudding. F.W. Dawson’s treatise on the history of the holiday, Christmas: Its Origins & Associations (1902) contains no fewer than sixteen illustrations featuring Christmas food and feasting through the centuries, including this look at Renaissance wassailers:
Wassailing was an early incarnation of Christmas caroling, in which people went door-to-door to toast the season with their neighbors (“Wassail,” or waes hael, is an Anglo-Saxon toast meaning “Good health”). A popular carol from the mid-1800s immortalizes the tradition:
Here we come a wassailing, among the leaves so green
Here we come a wand’ring, so fair to be seen.
Love and joy come to you, and to you your wassail too,
And God bless you and send you a happy new year!
Revelers fortunate enough to be invited inside would be welcomed with a holiday spread for the ages (including, if they were lucky, the figgy pudding!).
“Christmas Eve Dinner,” 1904 by Swedish artist Carl Larsson
Charles Dickens, who did much to promote Christmas to an eager Victorian audience, offered several lively depictions of grand holiday meals (even among his characters of modest means).
There never was such a goose. Bob said he didn’t believe there ever was such a goose cooked. Its tenderness and flavour, size and cheapness, were the themes of universal admiration. Eked out by apple-sauce and mashed potatoes, it was a sufficient dinner for the whole family; indeed, as Mrs Cratchit said with great delight (surveying one small atom of a bone upon the dish), they hadn’t ate it all at last! Yet everyone had had enough, and the youngest Cratchits in particular, were steeped in sage and onion to the eyebrows! —A Christmas Carol, 1843
This particular goose is from the Cratchits’ celebration of Christmas Present (of course, they later have an even more spectacular goose, thanks to Scrooge). But where would the poor Cratchits have gotten such a meal? From their local Goose Club.
The mysterious goose from “The Blue Carbuncle,” Sidney Paget, 1891
Goose Clubs were a type of layaway, sponsored by neighborhood pubs or other organizations, in which families could put in a few pence each week and be sure to have a nice fat goose for their Christmas tables. A sinister twist on this custom (including quite a detailed explanation of its workings) appears in the only Sherlock Holmes story set at Christmas, “The Blue Carbuncle.”
Although Victorian Christmas celebrated time-honored traditions (even if they were brand new), some on-trend revelers were eager to try new delicacies. A dish making the rounds at the end of the century was France’s bûche de noël, or Yule log cake. Last year, this tradition became part of our own holiday feast.
Have fun stirring up some holiday cheer in your own kitchens this year!
Wassail!
