MICHELLE DOUGLASS: Hello and welcome to the National Trust
Podcast. I'm Michelle Douglass. Why do millions of us put up a
tree in our home and decorate it with sparkly bits in a strange
ritual marking the start of Christmas?
In this festive story, we'll be travelling to London in the
mid-1800s to discover how one eye-popping image of young
trendsetters Queen Victoria and Prince Albert went viral 19th
century style and sparked a Christmas tree trend in Britain
and beyond.
And a quick heads up if you're listening with kids around, this
episode briefly features some adult content.
It's the run-up to Christmas at Lacock Abbey in Wiltshire, a
medieval monastic-style building you might recognise from scenes
in the Harry Potter films.
The Lacock team are all hands on deck for the sizeable feat of
transforming the Abbey into an enchanted Christmas kingdom.
The centrepiece is the Christmas trees. They're putting up dozens
of little Christmas trees for the community festival in the
cloisters, two big trees in the Great Hall.
And finally, there's a huge 20-foot Christmas tree to hoist
up in the courtyard entrance.
The pressure is on to get the trees up, straight and
sparkling, before expectant visitors start arriving at 11am.
More than 85% of British homes put up a Christmas tree each
year. According to the British Christmas Tree Growers
Association.
We often look to the old and the new. Traditions from childhood,
new rituals from adulthood.
Perhaps you enjoy looking for future inspiration, like on
social media where there's no shortage of people filling our
feeds with ideas for festive flair for your tree.
But when it comes to historic influences, there's one couple
and one image that can be credited above everything else
for triggering the great Christmas tree trend.
CLARA WOOLFORD: Our Christmases would look very different if
this image hadn't have been circulated so widely.
I'm Clara Woolford and I am the property curator at Cragside in
Northumberland.
MICHELLE DOUGLASS: It's December 1848, The Illustrated London
News, the world's first illustrated weekly news
magazine, has issued a Christmas special featuring an eye-popping
printed picture.
It's an unusually intimate portrait of the young Queen
Victoria, her husband Prince Albert and their children,
decorating a new kind of festive centrepiece rarely seen by Brits
before.
An evergreen tree in their home?
CLARA WOOLFORD: The 1848 print is showing a beautifully
decorated Christmas tree.
You've got this gorgeous evergreen and it's lit with
candles.
On top of that are all of these little ornaments.
There's things like cradles and letters and puddings.
Some of these would have been handmade. They're all hanging
off of the tree. And then gathered around are the family.
Prince Albert and Queen Victoria are both very much enjoying a
family moment.
They're interacting with the children and it's a glimpse of
their family life that we wouldn't have had previously.
And they are, they're doing it really, really intentionally.
They're trying to set this idealistic portrayal of what the
perfect family setup should be.
And that is all tied into how you celebrate Christmas.
MICHELLE DOUGLASS: Before the 19th century, Christmas in
Britain looked very different.
CLARA WOOLFORD: There was a tradition in Britain and
actually across most of Europe, and it was called, which I
really like, it's called Christmasing.
So it's literally making your house ready for Christmas.
It's kind of mixed with a pagan tradition, celebrating the
natural world.
You would be bringing in greenery, very green, simple.
Totally different to when the Victorians start to bring in
some quite garish elements to their Christmas design.
MICHELLE DOUGLASS: Queen Victoria's husband, Prince
Albert, is credited with popularising Christmas trees in
Britain.
But the idea itself was nothing new. Albert had brought an old
ritual with him from his home country, Germany.
CLARA WOOLFORD: Christmas trees are German tradition.
There's definitely this long, long history of bringing
Evergreens into homes in Germany around that festive period.
Really comes to England with Queen Charlotte. So she is the
German wife of George III.
And in 1800, she brings a yew branch into Windsor Castle and
decorates it with candles.
It becomes quite a firmly established tradition in the
upper classes of Britain. So it's not something that
everybody is doing.
MICHELLE DOUGLASS: But why did a single image of Queen Victoria,
Prince Albert and their Christmas tree cause such a
stir?
No super influencer or celebrity royal family member today could
hope to touch the influence that the couple Victoria and Albert
had in the mid 1800s.
CLARA WOOLFORD: Previously, the royal family were quite
disconnected. What changes is that Queen Victoria and Prince
Albert especially, he really drives this, are very conscious
of their image.
MICHELLE DOUGLASS: Victoria and Albert were a different kind of
royal.
They helped to style a constitutional monarchy. The
role was more separated from politics, and instead they
focused on becoming patrons of charities and institutions and
making civic visits.
And they used their domestic life, a solid marriage that
produced nine children, to create an idealised personal
image too.
CLARA WOOLFORD: They have a kind of personal interest in
presenting their family as the kind of ideal husband and wife
with their children, the kind of family that they want to
encourage their subjects to be.
MICHELLE DOUGLASS: They may have been appearance conscious, but
Victoria and Albert's private passion for each other was
authentic.
CLARA WOOLFORD: They did have a real genuine relationship. Her
diaries are full of references to basically how gorgeous she
thinks Albert is.
They're married in 1840 and she does write about not getting a
lot of sleep on her wedding night.
And they're having so many children. She's constantly
pregnant. She's constantly moaning about being pregnant
because she feels that that impacts their sex lives and
that's very important to her.
They know they're young and attractive and popular. They
know that they have this Victorian idea of all these
children, but they definitely publicise it as well.
MICHELLE DOUGLASS: In the 1800s, the Industrial Revolution's new
technology had brought with it the dawn of the mass media.
People hungrily devoured the new wave of up-to-the-moment
newspapers and lifestyle magazines illustrated with
eye-catching images that jumped out of the text.
Victoria and Albert used this media revolution to position
themselves as 19th century mega-influencers.
CLARA WOOLFORD: How they managed to create this mass influence is
that they're using mass media. So newspapers are really
prevalent during this period.
We suddenly get a proliferation of illustrated papers as well.
So there's the London Illustrated News, the Graphic,
but everybody has access to them in a way that wasn't previously
there.
They're in lending libraries, people are reading in pubs. You
have five different editions of the same paper in one day.
People are consuming mass media in a way that's quite
recognisable to us.
Victoria and Albert are trendsetters. People are
following what she's wearing, what is he reading, where are
they visiting, people copying that lifestyle.
MICHELLE DOUGLASS: Against the backdrop of Victoria and
Albert's popularity with the British public, and the new age
of mass media, printer J. L. Williams creates his 1848 wood
engraving image of the young royal family decorating their
Christmas tree.
CLARA WOOLFORD: The wood engraving, which is also
beautifully coloured as well, so it's a really rich image. It
appears in print in its black and white form in the London
Illustrated News, but it also becomes a kind of big, splashy
front pager of celebrating Christmas at home with the
royals.
And it has a huge impact. So suddenly the middle classes,
anyone that can afford to aspire to this kind of ideal is doing
so.
So they're starting to bring in trees, the little handmade
decorations or things that were being bought between the
couples.
So Albert and Victoria bought each other Christmas decorations
that had special meanings to them.
That sort of tradition was also copied, but then you've got the
mass market and the mass industrialisation of the 19th
century where you can suddenly buy Christmas ornaments.
MICHELLE DOUGLASS: One of the key and quite alarming
decorations was to create a starry light effect using real
candles tied to the tree with ribbons, what could possibly go
wrong?
One newspaper talks of a lucky escape. "Panic at a Workhouse"
writes the coventry evening telegraph in 1891.
A lighted candle fell from the tree and ignited the toys and
wool. The children ran out screaming. Beyond the loss of
the toys and the partial burning of the tree, no damage was done.
CLARA WOOLFORD: They have looser health and safety concerns, I
think, than us.
MICHELLE DOUGLASS: Middle class people in Britain could now
afford to have a royal German tradition in their homes.
And trees began appearing in public places like town squares,
as well as being donated in places in need of cheer, like
workhouses.
As well as taking off in Britain, the US got the
Christmas tree bug too.
A version of the image of the royal family and their tree made
it into the influential monthly publication Godey's Lady's Book,
and the fashion for Christmas trees was set.
One American businessman recognised the potential for the
market for Christmas tree baubles.
Round glass baubles originated from the German mountain village
of Lauscha.
The American businessman first imported artisanal baubles from
Germany and later more cheaply mass-produced ones.
The trinkets were extremely popular with customers and at
Christmas stores were transformed to show them off.
You may have heard of the businessman who helped bring
Christmas baubles to the mass market, if you can remember a
certain high street shop. His name was Mr. Frank Woolworth.
The way we celebrate Christmas today is largely thanks to the
Victorians.
CLARA WOOLFORD: The Victorians Really invented our modern
Christmas.
Things that we think about as being quintessentially Christmas
items, like the Christmas card. The Christmas cracker was
invented in the 1860s by Thomas Smith. The paper chain that
comes over from Germany in the 1850s. So all these things that
we kind of associate.
Charles Dickens'Christmas Carol really solidifies that because
he captures those traditions and kind of makes a sort of cult of
Christmas with the Victorians as well. They get so into it.
All those kind of trends and copying each other. And it
certainly sets the tone for our Christmases.
MICHELLE DOUGLASS: At Lacock Abbey, it's 11 o'clock. The
Christmas trees are up, adorned and sparkling.
Visitors begin arriving. And the magical midwinter sight puts
smiles of delight on people across the generations.
So why has the Christmas tree remained so prevailingly
popular?
CLARA WOOLFORD: It's sheer size. You're bringing a tree into your
house and it's the focal point for gift giving, for gathering
around it.
You know, you were encouraged to gather around your tree and sing
carols and admire it. I guess it marks the occasion.
That image, I think is- still resonates with us. You know, the
kind of prioritisation of families and Christmas being
something that's celebrated in your home.
It's still very much the big thing is, you know, "when are
you going to put your tree up?"
MICHELLE DOUGLASS: Thank you for listening to this Christmas
episode of the National Trust Podcast. You can see the UK's
tallest Christmas tree, a whopping 42-metre giant redwood
at Cragside in Northumberland.
And there are many other places around the country to see
enchanting Christmas tree displays at the National Trust.
We'll be back in the new year, and I'm excited to share in
Spring 2025 we'll be changing the National Trust Podcast to
bring you more immersive stories in nature, history and
adventure.
Stay on this stream for our new nature podcast, The Wild World
Of, and look out for our new history podcast, Back When.
We'll keep you up to date on the changes here on this channel.
From all of us on the National Trust Podcast, a Merry
Christmas, or however you choose to spend the festive season, and
a very happy new year.