The struggle for the Victorian Festive Season. The Transition from celebrating New Year to ‘Happy Christmas’?
The modern Christmas is attributed to Charles Dickens Christmas Carol (1843) and the promotion of the Christmas tree, decorations etc by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in 1848. It remained something mostly marked by the better off who could afford to do so.
Beyond that however was a wider discussion about whether the focus of end of year celebrations should be Christmas or the wider twelve days of Christmas with foci on New Year and Epiphany.
Below is a commentary on that from the Chartist Northern Star, a weekly paper with considerable circulation.
Christmas Day is come and gone, but not so Christmas festivities ; we have yet New Year’s Day and Twelfth Night before us, and gladly do we snatch at the remaining hours of mirth and joviality, ere we finally resume the stern duties, toils, and struggle of another year.
But there are seasons when we may profitably abstain for a moment from the toils of the contest, take breath, an hereby gather up new vigour for future conflicts
Northern Star 30th December 1843
Marx and Engels being German, would have been well aware of the Christmas celebrations which were more advanced in that country. However it is not until 1859 that we find Engels sending Marx a case of wine for Christmas. In every other year in their correspondence it is New Year not Christmas that is marked.
The matter was settled from above by the 1871 Bank Holidays Act which Boxing Day a public holiday whereas New Year’s Day was not. A separate Act for Scotland however made January 1st not December 26th a public holiday.
The situation was not regularised until 1974 when both Boxing and New Years Day became public holidays in Scotland, England and Wales
and now January 2nd as well in Scotland