Christmas in Nineteenth Century
No other people have observed the Christmas season with such wild abandon as the English, and they have been celebrating it for more than a thousand years. According to legend, King Arthur made merrie in York in 521 surrounded by "minstrels,
gleemen, harpers, pipe-players, jugglers, and dancers."
Ever since, except for a brief period of Cromwellian rule when Christmas went underground, hearty feasting and merrymaking have been the order of the season.
"For many people, Christmas was reinvented by the Victorian/nineteenth century society," says Countess Maria Hubert von
Staufer, Director of Christmas Archives International in the United Kingdom. "It is a popular misconception that Christmas in
England was eradicated by the Cromwellians in the seventeenth century and was only reinvented by the Victorians."