Elder brother returns for Christmas
- May Christmas come with Joy to thee !
- It draws true hearts together,
- It breathes a peace sublime,
- God bless the kind old season,
- God bless the dear old time.
Merry Christmas in the Olden Times
The Victorian card publishers were very fond of illustrating bygone times. Visitors and travellers arriving at Christmas shown in old costumes are the romantic and old-time associations which made the pictures on the cards so popular.
Christmas was a time for looking back and savouring the traditions of Olde England.
From Top
- No publisher
- 108 x 127mm (4¼ x 5in)
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- De La Rue & Co Series No 303
- 159 x 102mm (6¼ x 4in)
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Awaiting the arrival of a favourite uncle
Christmas Eve in Victorian times was a day for arrivals. Those who were going to spend Christmas with friends or relatives travelled by train or coach.
The coach would be crowded both inside and out, with passengers who were on their way to the homes of relations or friends to eat the Christmas Dinner. Others were returning home for the holidays, and promising themselves a world of enjoyment.
It was a time for families to be reunited and to enjoy themselves to the full, besides the yule log’s Christmas glow.
On track for a Merry Christmas
“Through the deep, still night speed on the rapid trains - from the factories of Manchester and the looms of Bradford, from the farmyards of Norfolk and Essex, from the milk-abounding pastures of Devonshire; right on the mighty Babel of the modern world, where they disgorge their wonderful burden.
No long labouring and toiling through snow-drifts, no spurring of jaded steeds, no lumbering heavily in ponderous vehicles over half-formed roads; but swiftly, certainly, unhestatingly, borne onward some thirty or forty miles an hour by that last great feudatory of man - the giant steam.
And so men reach their homes at Christmas time, One Thousand Eight Hundred and Fifty Nine.”
Illustrated London News December 31 1859
From Top
- No publisher
- 121 x 83mm (4¾ x 3¼in)
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- Scrap/die-cut c1870s
- 38 x 25mm (1½ x 1in)
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