Discussion Post: The Blue Carbuncle
Dec. 4th, 2016 08:01 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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sherlock60This week, the canon story we’re looking at is The Blue Carbuncle and the chosen topic is The Victorian Christmas.
A few facts:
🎄 [Today’s] Christmas is still essentially that which was remodelled in the 19th century to suit the tastes and ideals of the time. Victorian festivities were centred on the home, the family and the indulgence of children and… this is still the Christmas we attempt to recapture and regard as traditional. The trappings of this festival reflect Victorian innovations: the cards, the tree, the crackers, the family meal with a turkey and, of course, Father Christmas or Santa Claus. [Arthur Purdue]
🎄 From the 17th century, when Puritan disapproval... saw it fall out of favour, Christmas was of only minor interest. The big winter holiday was Twelfth Night, the Feast of Epiphany, on 6 January. It wasn’t until the early 19th century that Christmas began to regain popularity. [Judith Flanders]
🎄 Christmas before 1840: In the eighteenth century, Christmas was treated with indifference… Some middle class people were Protestants of Quaker, Puritan, and Baptist origin. Extravagant celebrations of Christmas were perceived as a relic of the Catholic past and something that was primarily enjoyed by the wealthy. Despite these beliefs, it was celebrated enthusiastically by clerks, domestic workers and the shopkeeping classes. Christmas related activity increased in the 1840s. [Sandra Alvarez]
🎄 Christmas trees were unknown in Britain until, in the 1830s, the many German families living in Manchester began to put them up in their houses. Queen Victoria and her German husband, Albert, had one for the first time in 1840, and three years later an illustration of them grouped around the tree made the German custom seem ‘British’. [Judith Flanders]
🎄 When Queen Victoria first came to the throne both chicken and turkey were too expensive for most people to enjoy. In northern England roast beef was also the traditional meal for Christmas dinner while in London and the south, goose was favourite although many poor people made do with rabbit. [Jersey Heritage]
🎄 ...the railways… altered the main course of the meal, which was traditionally goose. Before steam, animals were herded to market alive, and turkeys were such poor walkers that they needed little leather boots to protect their feet, and a second fattening-up period at the end of the march, which made them rare and expensive. With the arrival of trains, the price of turkeys dropped, and their large size made them perfect for equally large Victorian families. [Judith Flanders]
🎄 Plum porridge, a beef broth thickened with bread and flavoured with dried fruit, wine and spices, had long been a seasonal food, while Twelfth Night cakes were also traditional, with their hidden dried bean and pea baked into them: whoever found these became King and Queen of Twelfth Night. Both these foods were easily transformed into Christmas fare: plum pudding and Christmas cake.
🎄 ...Father Christmas or Santa Claus come from two entirely separate traditions. Father Christmas was originally part of an old English midwinter festival, and he was normally dressed in green, a sign of the returning spring. St Nicholas came from America, where as Sinter Klass, he had been taken by Dutch settlers in the 17th Century. From the 1870s Sinter Klass became known in Britain as Santa Claus and with him came his unique gift and toy distribution system - reindeer and sleigh. [Jersey Heritage]
🎄 Christmas Cards were introduced in 1843 by Sir Henry Cole following the introduction of the Penny Post in 1840. Before then it was the custom to write long, detailed letters to friends and family at Christmas. Cole commissioned an artist to design some cards which carried a short seasonal and had a thousand cards printed for sale in his art shop in London at one shilling each. The popularity of sending cards was given a boost in 1870 when a halfpenny postage rate was introduced as a result of the efficiencies brought about by the new railways. [Jersey Heritage]
Until 1840, letters were paid for by the recipients, not the senders, and they were charged by the mile. The Penny Post moved the cost to the sender, and brought in a flat charge of one penny, a tenth or less than earlier prices… Only in the 1880s, when printing technology improved and prices dropped, did Christmas cards became a standard part of the season. [Judith Flanders]
🎄 Another novel Victorian invention was the Christmas cracker. ...this was the invention of one Tom Smith, a London confectioner… Whilst on holiday in France in 1840, Tom discovered the French bon-bon; a sugared almond… wrapped in a twist of waxed paper. He marketed the bon-bons in time for Christmas... ...he [then] hit upon the simple idea of double wrapping the sweets; first a single roll of waxed paper, then a motto and then a plain outer wrapper. [His next step] was to include a small charm or trinket and he put this with the wrapped sweet in a small tube, alongside the motto and then wrapped the whole thing in the outer wrapper. Instant success and the “Christmas Bonbonne ~complete with surprise” -was born!
Two years later Tom had perfected a safe means of perfecting [a] bang by using saltpetre pasted between two thin strips of card to create a crack. Thus, in 1860 Tom Smith’s “Bangs of Expectation” were launched; the forerunner of our modern cracker. They were small and known as “Cosaques” after the cracking of the whips of the Cossack horsemen as they rode through Paris during the Franco-Prussian Wars. Paper hats were added later as a part of the fancy dress popular at Twelfth Night parties. [Sylvia Edwards]
🎄 ...carols had faded away with the Puritan rejection of Christmas. When they revived, they were generally about feasting, not religion. [Judith Flanders]
🎄 While carols were not invented by the Victorians, it was a tradition that they actively revived. Some Victorians felt traditional Christmas carols were being forgotten so published books of popular carols. Many used the same words, but were put to new, livelier tunes. Most of the carols we know and sing today are these new Victorian songs. [BBC]
🎄 At the start of Victoria's reign, children's toys tended to be handmade and hence expensive, generally restricting availability to those rich enough to buy them. With factories however came mass production and this meant that games, dolls, books and clockwork toys all became more affordable. Toys were still quite costly so poor families would also give their children a few things such as an apple, orange and a few nuts. Christmas stockings first became popular from around 1870. [Jersey Heritage]
🎄 Although most people did not stop work until Christmas Eve, the traditional Victorian Christmas began with the making of the Advent wreath from ivy, laurel and holly and four candles, one to be lit on each of the four Sundays of Advent symbolizing faith, joy, love and peace. [Jersey Heritage]
🎄 The wealth generated by the new factories and industries of the Victorian age allowed middle class families in England and Wales to take time off work and celebrate over two days, Christmas Day and Boxing Day. [Jersey Heritage]
🎄 Since many working class people were employed by middle and upper classes as domestic aids to assist in their Christmas occasions, the working class had very little time to enjoy their own. Shop assistants, postal workers and domestic servants did not get to experience Christmas like their upper class counterparts until the latter half of the nineteenth century. [Sandra Alvarez]
🎄 ...the new railways… allowed people who had moved into the towns and cities in search of work to return home for a family Christmas. [John Moses]
🎄 ...charity too was a major component of the middle-class [Victorian] Christmas. Newspapers printed Christmas appeals for donations for the poor, the sick, the elderly, and charitable organisations provided Christmas dinners for the poor… [Judith Flanders]
🎄 In 1834… [there was] the introduction of the Poor Law Act, which rationalised the running of the workhouses, but also created such a harsh regime so that no-one would want to enter a workhouse, except as the last resort. The new Poor Law Commissioners ordered that no extra food was to be given out at Christmas. In reality, the Guardians, who ran the workhouses, took a more humane view. The Times newspaper published a regular review of how the inmates were treated at Christmas in the workhouses around London, which included Brentford, for the years from 1840 to 1870, and found that a proper Christmas dinner was given in almost all the workhouses. [John Moses]
Some useful resources:
Activities: Make your own Victorian Christmas On the BBC website. The videos are no longer working on the site (they’re on YouTube though). But there are step-by-step guides.
Victorian Christmas videos Various BBC Victorian Christmas videos on YouTube. (The videos are no longer working on the BBC website itself.) Lots of things to make and do that you can try yourself at home.
History of Christmas On the BBC website.
A Victorian Christmas A PDF, on Jersey Heritage.
Victorian Christmas By Judith Flanders, on the British Library website. Judith Flanders describes how many of our own Christmas traditions – from trees and crackers to cards and carols – have their origins in 19th-century industrial and commercial interests.
Victorian Christmas By Sandra Alvarez, on Early Modern England.
Christmas celebrations: the old versus the new By Professor Arthur Purdue, on HistoryExtra.
Victorian Christmas Traditions By Sylvia Edwards, on Ancestry.
Frog murder and boiled children: 'Merry Christmas' Victorian style By Bethan Bell, on the BBC website. A look at some of the more unusual Victorian Christmas cards. [Article discovered by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
okapi1895.]
The origins of A Christmas Carol By John Sutherland, on the British Library website.
The Dickensian Christmas By Mark Connelly, on HistoryExtra.
Christmas and the Victorian poor By John Moses, on Living In Magazines.
Christmas in the Workhouse On The Workhouse.
A Victorian Christmas: Christmas Day In The Workhouse On OpenLearn. For its December 25th, 1840 edition, the Morning Chronicle polled workhouse managers to discover what the poor of London could expect for their Christmas Day. The following is an extract of their report.
Christmas Among the London Poor and Sick On the British Library website. A scan of an article 'Christmas Among the London Poor and Sick' from the periodical Household Words. Article published 21 December 1850. Two pages - you are able to zoom in and read them clearly.
A Victorian Christmas: Thackeray goes to the pantomime On OpenLearn. In this extract from Roundabout Papers, William Makepeace Thackeray describes a festive entertainment which takes liberties with history.
A Victorian Christmas: Victoria's Christmas On OpenLearn. Victoria spends Christmas 1837 with a "merry" Lord Melbourne. An extract from her journal.
Christmas fun: Victorian parlour games On the Independent website.
Victorian Christmas Games On Mookychick.
Victorian Parlour Games On The Victorian School.
Parlor Games On Victoria’s Past.
How to cook a Victorian Christmas feast By Leah Hyslop, on the Telegraph website.
Dorothy Hartley, Cattern Cakes & Lace and a Victorian Epiphany Tart Recipe The Epiphany Tart! By Karen Burns-Booth, on Lavender and Lovage.
Epiphany Tart By Charlotte (WaltzingM), on Catholic Cuisine.
A Christmas Selection Box from the Archives On the Victoria and Albert Museum website.
Victorian Christmas Crackers On Victoriana Magazine.
Please feel free to discuss this topic in the comments.
Please also feel free to comment about the canon story itself or any related aspects outside this week’s theme. For example, any reactions, thoughts, theories, fic recs, favourite adaptations of the canon story… Or any other contribution you wish to make. And if you have any suggestions for fic prompts springing from this week's story, please feel free to share those in the comments as well.
P.S. Small Hobbit and I have chosen topics for the discussion posts as far as Christmas, but we're just about to start work on coming up with the next batch. If there's a topic you'd particularly like to see popping up in the rest of this round - whether you've got a particular story in mind for it or not - let us know in the comments and we'll try to fit it in!
A few facts:
🎄 [Today’s] Christmas is still essentially that which was remodelled in the 19th century to suit the tastes and ideals of the time. Victorian festivities were centred on the home, the family and the indulgence of children and… this is still the Christmas we attempt to recapture and regard as traditional. The trappings of this festival reflect Victorian innovations: the cards, the tree, the crackers, the family meal with a turkey and, of course, Father Christmas or Santa Claus. [Arthur Purdue]
🎄 From the 17th century, when Puritan disapproval... saw it fall out of favour, Christmas was of only minor interest. The big winter holiday was Twelfth Night, the Feast of Epiphany, on 6 January. It wasn’t until the early 19th century that Christmas began to regain popularity. [Judith Flanders]
🎄 Christmas before 1840: In the eighteenth century, Christmas was treated with indifference… Some middle class people were Protestants of Quaker, Puritan, and Baptist origin. Extravagant celebrations of Christmas were perceived as a relic of the Catholic past and something that was primarily enjoyed by the wealthy. Despite these beliefs, it was celebrated enthusiastically by clerks, domestic workers and the shopkeeping classes. Christmas related activity increased in the 1840s. [Sandra Alvarez]
🎄 Christmas trees were unknown in Britain until, in the 1830s, the many German families living in Manchester began to put them up in their houses. Queen Victoria and her German husband, Albert, had one for the first time in 1840, and three years later an illustration of them grouped around the tree made the German custom seem ‘British’. [Judith Flanders]
🎄 When Queen Victoria first came to the throne both chicken and turkey were too expensive for most people to enjoy. In northern England roast beef was also the traditional meal for Christmas dinner while in London and the south, goose was favourite although many poor people made do with rabbit. [Jersey Heritage]
🎄 ...the railways… altered the main course of the meal, which was traditionally goose. Before steam, animals were herded to market alive, and turkeys were such poor walkers that they needed little leather boots to protect their feet, and a second fattening-up period at the end of the march, which made them rare and expensive. With the arrival of trains, the price of turkeys dropped, and their large size made them perfect for equally large Victorian families. [Judith Flanders]
🎄 Plum porridge, a beef broth thickened with bread and flavoured with dried fruit, wine and spices, had long been a seasonal food, while Twelfth Night cakes were also traditional, with their hidden dried bean and pea baked into them: whoever found these became King and Queen of Twelfth Night. Both these foods were easily transformed into Christmas fare: plum pudding and Christmas cake.
🎄 ...Father Christmas or Santa Claus come from two entirely separate traditions. Father Christmas was originally part of an old English midwinter festival, and he was normally dressed in green, a sign of the returning spring. St Nicholas came from America, where as Sinter Klass, he had been taken by Dutch settlers in the 17th Century. From the 1870s Sinter Klass became known in Britain as Santa Claus and with him came his unique gift and toy distribution system - reindeer and sleigh. [Jersey Heritage]
🎄 Christmas Cards were introduced in 1843 by Sir Henry Cole following the introduction of the Penny Post in 1840. Before then it was the custom to write long, detailed letters to friends and family at Christmas. Cole commissioned an artist to design some cards which carried a short seasonal and had a thousand cards printed for sale in his art shop in London at one shilling each. The popularity of sending cards was given a boost in 1870 when a halfpenny postage rate was introduced as a result of the efficiencies brought about by the new railways. [Jersey Heritage]
Until 1840, letters were paid for by the recipients, not the senders, and they were charged by the mile. The Penny Post moved the cost to the sender, and brought in a flat charge of one penny, a tenth or less than earlier prices… Only in the 1880s, when printing technology improved and prices dropped, did Christmas cards became a standard part of the season. [Judith Flanders]
🎄 Another novel Victorian invention was the Christmas cracker. ...this was the invention of one Tom Smith, a London confectioner… Whilst on holiday in France in 1840, Tom discovered the French bon-bon; a sugared almond… wrapped in a twist of waxed paper. He marketed the bon-bons in time for Christmas... ...he [then] hit upon the simple idea of double wrapping the sweets; first a single roll of waxed paper, then a motto and then a plain outer wrapper. [His next step] was to include a small charm or trinket and he put this with the wrapped sweet in a small tube, alongside the motto and then wrapped the whole thing in the outer wrapper. Instant success and the “Christmas Bonbonne ~complete with surprise” -was born!
Two years later Tom had perfected a safe means of perfecting [a] bang by using saltpetre pasted between two thin strips of card to create a crack. Thus, in 1860 Tom Smith’s “Bangs of Expectation” were launched; the forerunner of our modern cracker. They were small and known as “Cosaques” after the cracking of the whips of the Cossack horsemen as they rode through Paris during the Franco-Prussian Wars. Paper hats were added later as a part of the fancy dress popular at Twelfth Night parties. [Sylvia Edwards]
🎄 ...carols had faded away with the Puritan rejection of Christmas. When they revived, they were generally about feasting, not religion. [Judith Flanders]
🎄 While carols were not invented by the Victorians, it was a tradition that they actively revived. Some Victorians felt traditional Christmas carols were being forgotten so published books of popular carols. Many used the same words, but were put to new, livelier tunes. Most of the carols we know and sing today are these new Victorian songs. [BBC]
🎄 At the start of Victoria's reign, children's toys tended to be handmade and hence expensive, generally restricting availability to those rich enough to buy them. With factories however came mass production and this meant that games, dolls, books and clockwork toys all became more affordable. Toys were still quite costly so poor families would also give their children a few things such as an apple, orange and a few nuts. Christmas stockings first became popular from around 1870. [Jersey Heritage]
🎄 Although most people did not stop work until Christmas Eve, the traditional Victorian Christmas began with the making of the Advent wreath from ivy, laurel and holly and four candles, one to be lit on each of the four Sundays of Advent symbolizing faith, joy, love and peace. [Jersey Heritage]
🎄 The wealth generated by the new factories and industries of the Victorian age allowed middle class families in England and Wales to take time off work and celebrate over two days, Christmas Day and Boxing Day. [Jersey Heritage]
🎄 Since many working class people were employed by middle and upper classes as domestic aids to assist in their Christmas occasions, the working class had very little time to enjoy their own. Shop assistants, postal workers and domestic servants did not get to experience Christmas like their upper class counterparts until the latter half of the nineteenth century. [Sandra Alvarez]
🎄 ...the new railways… allowed people who had moved into the towns and cities in search of work to return home for a family Christmas. [John Moses]
🎄 ...charity too was a major component of the middle-class [Victorian] Christmas. Newspapers printed Christmas appeals for donations for the poor, the sick, the elderly, and charitable organisations provided Christmas dinners for the poor… [Judith Flanders]
🎄 In 1834… [there was] the introduction of the Poor Law Act, which rationalised the running of the workhouses, but also created such a harsh regime so that no-one would want to enter a workhouse, except as the last resort. The new Poor Law Commissioners ordered that no extra food was to be given out at Christmas. In reality, the Guardians, who ran the workhouses, took a more humane view. The Times newspaper published a regular review of how the inmates were treated at Christmas in the workhouses around London, which included Brentford, for the years from 1840 to 1870, and found that a proper Christmas dinner was given in almost all the workhouses. [John Moses]
Some useful resources:
Activities: Make your own Victorian Christmas On the BBC website. The videos are no longer working on the site (they’re on YouTube though). But there are step-by-step guides.
Victorian Christmas videos Various BBC Victorian Christmas videos on YouTube. (The videos are no longer working on the BBC website itself.) Lots of things to make and do that you can try yourself at home.
History of Christmas On the BBC website.
A Victorian Christmas A PDF, on Jersey Heritage.
Victorian Christmas By Judith Flanders, on the British Library website. Judith Flanders describes how many of our own Christmas traditions – from trees and crackers to cards and carols – have their origins in 19th-century industrial and commercial interests.
Victorian Christmas By Sandra Alvarez, on Early Modern England.
Christmas celebrations: the old versus the new By Professor Arthur Purdue, on HistoryExtra.
Victorian Christmas Traditions By Sylvia Edwards, on Ancestry.
Frog murder and boiled children: 'Merry Christmas' Victorian style By Bethan Bell, on the BBC website. A look at some of the more unusual Victorian Christmas cards. [Article discovered by
okapi1895.] The origins of A Christmas Carol By John Sutherland, on the British Library website.
The Dickensian Christmas By Mark Connelly, on HistoryExtra.
Christmas and the Victorian poor By John Moses, on Living In Magazines.
Christmas in the Workhouse On The Workhouse.
A Victorian Christmas: Christmas Day In The Workhouse On OpenLearn. For its December 25th, 1840 edition, the Morning Chronicle polled workhouse managers to discover what the poor of London could expect for their Christmas Day. The following is an extract of their report.
Christmas Among the London Poor and Sick On the British Library website. A scan of an article 'Christmas Among the London Poor and Sick' from the periodical Household Words. Article published 21 December 1850. Two pages - you are able to zoom in and read them clearly.
A Victorian Christmas: Thackeray goes to the pantomime On OpenLearn. In this extract from Roundabout Papers, William Makepeace Thackeray describes a festive entertainment which takes liberties with history.
A Victorian Christmas: Victoria's Christmas On OpenLearn. Victoria spends Christmas 1837 with a "merry" Lord Melbourne. An extract from her journal.
Christmas fun: Victorian parlour games On the Independent website.
Victorian Christmas Games On Mookychick.
Victorian Parlour Games On The Victorian School.
Parlor Games On Victoria’s Past.
How to cook a Victorian Christmas feast By Leah Hyslop, on the Telegraph website.
Dorothy Hartley, Cattern Cakes & Lace and a Victorian Epiphany Tart Recipe The Epiphany Tart! By Karen Burns-Booth, on Lavender and Lovage.
Epiphany Tart By Charlotte (WaltzingM), on Catholic Cuisine.
A Christmas Selection Box from the Archives On the Victoria and Albert Museum website.
Victorian Christmas Crackers On Victoriana Magazine.
Please feel free to discuss this topic in the comments.
Please also feel free to comment about the canon story itself or any related aspects outside this week’s theme. For example, any reactions, thoughts, theories, fic recs, favourite adaptations of the canon story… Or any other contribution you wish to make. And if you have any suggestions for fic prompts springing from this week's story, please feel free to share those in the comments as well.
P.S. Small Hobbit and I have chosen topics for the discussion posts as far as Christmas, but we're just about to start work on coming up with the next batch. If there's a topic you'd particularly like to see popping up in the rest of this round - whether you've got a particular story in mind for it or not - let us know in the comments and we'll try to fit it in!
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2016-12-04 07:59 pm (UTC)I watched the Granada & Cushing versions this week. There is also a Sherlock Hound and Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century versions that I didn't get a chance to view. Brett in his dressing gown contemplating the felt hat is such a gorgeous scene.
There are also two homemade versions. One is like animated paper dolls. I like the faithfulness to the text, though the graphics are sort of meh at times.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jtQBJDE9gI
The second I love the clay figures so much! But they butchered the text in the abridgment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5UxAJ-lWVk
no subject
Date: 2016-12-04 09:46 pm (UTC)I've had a look at the two amateur animated versions of BLUE. Must admit I did think the 'paper dolls' one was rather dull. It's a sweet enough style but just so static. The clay figures are something special though ^_^ I loved Holmes and his pipe especially. But yes, it did sound at times as though the filmmaker was just making the script up as he went along ^__^ I genuinely laughed out loud at the end when If you will have the goodness to touch the bell, Doctor, we will begin another investigation, in which, also a bird will be the chief feature" was abridged to "Watson! Let's eat!" ^_____^
Also had a look at the Sherlock Hound BLUE. It has very little to do with the original ACD version but I can thoroughly recommend it. Very good, very enjoyable ^_^
no subject
Date: 2016-12-16 01:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-12-16 01:11 am (UTC)And I adore Cushing's beautiful purple dressing gown. (And his coordinating purple scarf!)
no subject
Date: 2016-12-16 01:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-12-16 01:31 am (UTC)I've also wondered about all the pink in their Baker Street set, and how much of it (if any of it) was held over from the black-and-white Wilmer production (because B&W television sets were often heavy in pinks and reds, since that gave the best contrast on B&W film).
no subject
Date: 2016-12-16 01:14 am (UTC)I am definitely going to have to look up more about the history of domestic geese and turkeys, though. I had always assumed the turkey/goose split across the Atlantic had more to do with what bird was local (and thus traditional) where, but it looks like my mental model of that is all wrong...
no subject
Date: 2016-12-17 12:05 am (UTC)I do love the fact they had to wear little bootees ^^