15
Easter Folk Dance
Chocolate
Valentine's Cards
In some areas, Morris dancers perform a folk dance which has roots dating back to the Middle Ages. The men dress in colorful costumes with hats and ribbons. They also wear bells around their ankles as they dance through the streets. Some carry sticks with inflated pigs' bladders tied on the end. When they dance up to young women, they smack them over the head with the bladder. This is supposed to bring them luck. One wonders just what kind of luck the lady might find afterward--or is it the young man who gets lucky?
Valentine cards were more cherished that Christmas cards (which weren't printed commercially until 1846), perhaps because of the sentimentality attached to them. Due to this popularity, designing cards became a highly competitive market, with a vast array of motifs and verses. Suddenly, cards were being produced in tens of thousands, from whimsy and slightly vulgar, to truly sentimental, their designs included lace paper, embossed envelopes, glass or metal mirrors, ribbons, dried ferns and fake advertisements, bank notes and marriage licenses.
Valentine cards were so popular that their production became a flourishing trade amongst cheapjack printers in central London. Commercially printed valentine cards quickly superseded home-made offerings of earlier times. They reached the height of their popularity during the 1870s and 80s. Yet even though they were mass-produced, they still featured birds with real feathers, posies of dried flowers and spun-glass hearts, all trimmed with ribbons and gold lace.
Some valentines were so thick with embellishments, they came in presentation boxes. Some unfolded like fans, while mechanical valentines had levers or disks which made figures dance, hands move and birds flutter their wings.
Chocolate is the sweet that binds every holiday together, and the it's most popular sweet for St. Valentine's Day. We all love chocolate and the Victorian Era was rich for its wondrous chocolates. This was also the era that chocolate became solid because before this era, you could only drink chocolate.
Victorian Holidays
Easter Parades and Clothing
Christmas Trees
No one in the Victorian period knew anything about Christmas trees, and considered such a tradition absurd, until Queen Victoria's German husband brought the tradition from Germany's Windsor Castle in the 1840s.
PRE-AP ENGLISH
Easter parades allow the participants in the processional to show off their spring finery after Easter Mass as they stroll through the streets following a priest or minister with a crucifix or a candle. The Easter bonnet became a favorite adornment for women and girls to show off as they walked. During Victorian times, a beau might give a pair of gloves to his sweetheart and if she wore them during the parade, she was announcing her acceptance of his marriage proposal.
The children were especially excited when they awoke on Easter morning to see what the Easter bunny had brought them for their Easter baskets. If they had been good throughout the year, they could expect a variety of chocolate eggs and bunnies, jelly beans and other sweet treats. Egg rolling contests and Easter egg hunts were/are a favorite pastime during this holiday.
Boxing Day
Mrs.Collings 4th hr
Valentine's Day
Ethan
Presented By
Cassie
ALex
Angela
Christmas was not a joyous time for all, the poor and the servants were often unable to afford to have nice things.As a result, the Victorians threw themselves into charitable works with enthusiasm, giving Christmas boxes - presents of food and money to all the deserving poor of the parish, usually on the day after Christmas. Which is known as Boxing Day.
Valentine's Day was the most popular in the Victorian era. The people cherished the holiday more than Christmas.It was a merry holiday with love spreading through the air!
Easter Cards and LiIlies
Father Christmas
We so often rush headlong toward Christmas with unreasonable fantasies and when they fail to materialize wonder why we are depressed. On this Boxing Day, sit back, have a cup of hot tea and scone and promise yourself that next year you'll enjoy the simple joys of the season.
Normally associated with the bringer of the gifts, is Father Christmas or Santa Claus. The two are in fact two entirely separate stories. Father Christmas was originally part of an old English midwinter festival, normally dressed in green, a sign of the returning spring. The stories of St. Nicholas (Sinter Klaas in Holland) came via Dutch settlers to America in the 17th Century. From the 1870's Sinter Klass became known in Britain as Santa Claus and with him came his unique gift and toy distribution system - reindeer and sleigh.
A large variety of Victorian traditions have survived the years. One favorite is Easter cards, which began in the late 18th century when a publisher added an Easter greeting to a drawing of a bunny on writing stationery.The Easter Lily became popular in symbolizing life after death, since the bulb grows, blooms, dies back and grows once again during the following year. Although tulips, daffodils and narcissus follow the same life cycle, the lily with its large size and white blossom is an excellent symbol of resurrection during the season.
Easter
Great Expectations
Christmas
(Dec 25-26)
As we've learned, Christmas is a happy occasion for all, but in Great Expectations, it was a grueling and agonizing time for Pip. He was so worried about someone finding that he helped the convict, that he couldn't enjoy his dinner, and then there was Pumblechook's stupidity.Pip nearly panics when Pumblechook asks for the brandy and finds the bottle filled with tar-water. His panic increases when, suddenly, several police officers burst into the house with a pair of handcuffs. Basically, Christmas is not such a happy time for him is it?
Many of our current Christmas and Easter traditions originated back in the Victorian era which covered the duration of Queen Victoria's reign over the UK from 1837 to 1901. At that time England was emerging from its historic Puritanical bans on celebrations. The people at that time were filled with joy and hope as they embraced a new world of merry celebrations and traditions. Today many of these Victorian traditions are still popular and there is no sign that they will be abandoned.
Gifts
Christmas in the Victorian era, or (Great Expectations era) was extremely different from the Christmas we have today, because of setting, culture, atmosphere, and time period.
At the start of Victoria's reign, children's toys tended to be handmade and hence expensive, generally restricting availability to those "rich folk" again. With factories however came mass production, which brought with it games, dolls, books and clockwork toys all at a more affordable price. Affordable that is to "middle class" children. In a "poor child's" Christmas stocking, which first became popular from around 1870, only an apple, orange and a few nuts could be found.
Carols
The only similarity between their time and ours was Caroling because no matter how different cultures are, music always binds them together.
1843- O Come all ye Faithful
1848-Once in Royal David's City
1851- See Amid the Winters Snow
1868-O Little Town of Bethlehem
1883- Away in a Manger