It's too early! Preparing for the Festive Season in Jane Austen's time

“In half a minute Mrs Cratchit entered – flushed, but smiling proudly – with the pudding, like a speckled cannon ball, so hard and firm, blazing in half a half a quartern of ignited brandy, and bedight with Christmas Holly stuck into the top. Oh, what a wonderful pudding!” - A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens

Many will bemoan the idea of getting Christmassy before November is even out, but the fact of the matter is that preparations for the festive season have always encroached upon the month before December. Personally, I might be guilty of the odd early Christmas playlist, or for enjoying the odd mulled wine before there's even a proper chill in the air. Regardless of your perspective on when it's appropriate to start the celebrations, you have to admit that spreading it out a little makes everything less stressful when the big day comes. To celebrate our new Jane Austen Christmas Advent Candle available now in our gift shop, I thought it would be fun to delve into how Christmas preparations were made in Jane Austen's time. 

Stir Up Sunday 

Stir Up Sunday is the last Sunday before the beginning of Advent, this year falling on Sunday 24th November. The date takes its name from the collect in the Common Book of Prayer for the last Sunday before advent: 

“Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people”

So, whilst the day's name doesn't technically come from the stirring together of ingredients, the association today is very much with the tradition of preparing your ingredients for your Christmas pudding. Though many of us will go for the easy option of buying a supermarket pudding ready-made, those who make their pudding from scratch know the importance of starting on Stir Up Sunday. Dedicated adherents make their pudding almost five weeks in advance of the big day, 'feeding' it with brandy every couple of days to ensure the flavour becomes richer and fuller. Though this practice was solidified as a Christmas staple in the Victorian period, Christmas, or Plum Puddings, were a staple in at the dinner table for many decades before this, so there is a good chance the pudding may have featured at an Austen family Christmas.

Advent in the Church of England 

From this time onward, Christmas would certainly be at the front of the Regency mind. Each Sunday of Advent, a collect would be read from the Book of Common Prayer, reminding the parishioners of the advancing festive season. Surely at this time, Sunday mornings would remind Jane and her fellow churchgoers of preparations to mark the occasion -- letters that needed written, guests that needed to be invited, foodstuffs to be purchased for preparation. 

Inviting Guests

Just as it is today, Christmas in Austen's time was a family occasion. Throughout Austen's novels, characters make a point of inviting others around for Christmas lunch. 

In Emma, Mr Woodhouse expresses his dismay that his married daughter should not spend the season with them at Hartfield:

Mr. Knightley promises to give up his claim this Christmas -- though you know it is longer since they were with him, than with us."

    "It would be very hard indeed, my dear, if poor Isabella were to be anywhere but at Hartfield."

And also in Persuasion, Mary expresses to Anne her frustration at the lack of festivities; 

"We have had a very dull Christmas; Mr. and Mrs. Musgrove have not had one dinner-party all the holidays. I do not reckon the Hayters as anybody. The holidays, however, are over at last: I believe no children ever had such long ones. I am sure I had not. The house was cleared yesterday, except of the little Harvilles; but you will be surprised to hear that they have never gone home."

These two excerpts tell us a lot about the status of Christmas in Jane Austen's time. Though we think about the centring of Christmas as the most important holiday in the English Christian year as being a Victorian invention, it is clear that its importance in the calendar long predates Victoria and Albert. In the above, we can see clearly that the Woodhouses see the Christmas period as a crucial time to bring the whole family together, just as we do now. Moreover, clearly the choice of where and who to host the festivities was as politically and socially fraught as it can be now! The latter excerpt from Persuasion shows that the festive period was not only a time that families would be expected to host house guests, but also entertain their friends and acquaintances with dinner parties. The expectation was clearly that the darkest month of the year required lots of fun and festivity to keep the winter gloom from encroaching on our spirits. 

In the weeks running up to Christmas, one can imagine Regency England abuzz with flurries of letters and missives carried from parish to parish, inviting family to stay and friends to celebrate. Kitchens would be bustling with activity, laundries working overtime to make up extra beds for visitors. The hustle and bustle never ends! 

Decking the Halls

Though the Christmas tree wouldn't become a festive necessity until later in the century, decorating the house with greenery and candles would have been common in Jane Austen's time. Whilst most of us will typically decorate our homes in the weeks running up to the holiday, decorating in Regency England wouldn't be done until Christmas Eve. The reasons for this are fairly obvious; without electric fairy lights and plastic baubles, they were heavily reliant on perishable greenery. Evergreens like holly and ivy were commonly used as decorations, and kissing boughs would be made using mistletoe, hoping to catch an unsuspecting couple in the doorway.

Lighting the Yule Candle

It became tradition for local business to reward their regular customers with a Yule Candle to thank them for their loyalty throughout the year. This would be a pretty chunky candle, as the tradition was to light it at sunset on Christmas Eve and to let it burn until it was time to leave for church on Christmas morning. This practice does sound a bit of a fire hazard and we don't recommend leaving a candle unattended in your home overnight. Regency Brits, however, could be quite superstitious about the practice, believing all manner of dreadful things could befall them should the candle be extinguished during the night. Click here to learn more about this tradition.

Those are just a few pre-Christmas customs that were common in Jane Austen's time. Do you have any peculiar traditions you like to observe?

Ellen White is editor of the Jane Austen blog. If you would like to contribute to the blog, she would love to hear from you. Follow this link for more details.