Regency Christmas Traditions: Special Days of the Holiday Season
Christmas celebrations for our Regency ancestors started more than a month before Christmas and continue for almost two weeks beyond!
In Jane Austen’s England, Christmas wasn’t simply a day of gifts and a large family dinner. The holiday season followed a calendar of special days, each with its own customs, celebrations, and occasional peculiarities.
From Stir-up Sunday before Advent to the revelry of Twelfth Night in January, there was plenty to keep everyone in the holiday spirit. Some of these traditions are still familiar. Others might leave us scratching our heads.
Join me for a look at the special days that made up Christmas in Regency England.
This article is part of the An Historical Christmas collection, where you can explore more festive foods, forgotten customs, and holiday entertainments.
Stir it up Sunday
Stir it up Sunday, the Sunday before Advent, became closely associated with families preparing their Christmas puddings, which needed to age before they were served, flaming, at Christmas dinner. The day became known as “Stir Up Sunday,” not because of the great deal of stirring done, but because the opening words of the main prayer in the Book of Common Prayer of 1549 for that day are: ‘Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people…’
From the stories: Stir it Up Sunday
December 6: St. Nicholas Day
In a tradition from Northern Europe, the day might be celebrated with the exchanging of small gifts particularly for children. Not everyone participated in this custom. This was also the long accepted time for Christmastide visiting to begin.
December 21: St. Thomas Day
St Thomas’ Day was a day for elderly women (often widows) to go ‘a’thomasing’ at the houses of their more fortunate neighbors, hoping for gifts of food or money. Oftentimes, wheat was cooked and distributed to these ‘mumpers’ who came begging.
With the high price of wheat, these gifts were especially appreciated. This practice had become especially common during the early 1800’s. The Napoleonic wars may have contributed to the practice by dramatically increasing the number of widows.
From the stories: The Mumpers’ Blessing
December 24: Christmas Eve
On Christmas Eve, the decorations and greenery were put up throughout the house. Traditional greenery included holly, ivy, rosemary, evergreen, hawthorn, bay leaf, laurel, and hellebore (Christmas rose). Some households fashioned kissing boughs from evergreens and mistletoe, adding apples and pretty ribbon bows for decoration. The greenery remained in place until Epiphany when they were removed and burned lest they bring bad luck to the house.
From the stories: Miss Darcy and the Kissing Ball
December 25: Christmas day
Christmas Day usually began with a trip to church. Though gifts were not typically exchanged on this day, small gifts might be given to children. Cottagers would sometimes give generous landowners a symbolic gift for Christmas Day as well.
Coloured print of a man holding a boar’s head on a platter. J, Gilbert 1855. Public domain
Christmas Dinner was a feast to be anticipated. It often opened with a toast that included the servants who received their Christmas gifts at this time.
Boar’s head, roasted or brawn—a kind of potted meat dish—often took center stage. Roast goose was another Christmas dinner favorite. The size of the bird often required it be cooked by a baker with a large oven and picked up on the way home from church.
Many also considered mince meat pies, also known as Christmas or Twelfth Night pies, staples for a Christmas feast. The pies contained chopped meat, dried fruit, spices and sugar. Leftovers from the Christmas feast would be used to make pies for the twelve days until Epiphany. Eating minced pie every day of the twelve days of Christmas was said to bring twelve months of happiness in the new year.
At the end of the meal, the Christmas puddings made a month earlier would make their appearance. When the pudding was served, a sprig of holly was placed on the top of the pudding as a reminder of Jesus’ Crown of Thorns that he wore when he was killed. The pudding would be doused with brandy and set aflame, a key theatrical aspect of the holiday celebration.
From the stories: Christmas Feast at Longbourn
December 26: St. Stephen’s Day or Boxing Day
Giving ‘Christmas Boxes’ to charity and servants was the custom on St. Stephen’s Day, now called Boxing Day. Old clothing and extra items were boxed up and handed out to servants and tradesmen who visited that day, and servants were often given the day off. Boxing Day was also a traditional day for fox hunting. Theaters also opened their Christmas Pantomimes on Boxing Day.
From the stories: Boxing Day Charity
December 31: New Year’s Eve
A number of traditions formed around New Year’s eve and New Year’s day. Not all were practiced by everyone, and some varied by county. Some celebrated with the family or their party gathering in a circle before midnight. At the stroke of the midnight hour, the head of the family would open the door and usher out the old and welcome the new. Some who held to old superstitions would remove ashes, rags, scraps and anything perishable from the house so that nothing was carried over from one year to the next. In this way, they would preserve their good luck and banish any poor luck.
Some Scots and folks of northern England believed in ‘first footing’—the nature of the first visitor to set foot across the threshold after midnight on New Year’s eve affected the family’s fortunes.
A tall, dark, and handsome male stranger was the best omen, especially if his feet were the right shape. High-insteps implied that “water would run under”—that is bad luck would flow past. A flat foot meant bad luck, as did women in most cases.
These omens were not fully agreed upon as for some blonde or red-headed, bare-foot girls were bringers of good luck. Whoever was the first-footer, they had to be greeted with proper ceremony and a rhyme to welcome the New Year and bring good fortune.
The “first footer” entered through the front door. Tradition held that no one spoke until the ‘first-footer’ wished the occupants a happy new year. The first-footer would leave through the back door and take all the old year’s troubles and sorrows.
From the stories: First Footer
January 1: New Year’s Day
New Year’s Day was considered a predictor of good fortune for the next year. One custom was to hook a flat cake on the horns of a cow. If the cake fell off in front of the cow, it foretold good luck; if behind, bad.
In some regions, young women raced to draw the first water from the well in a practice known as ‘creaming the well.’ Possession of this water meant marriage within the coming year, particularly if the object of the young woman’s affections drank it on New Year’s Day. Some believed the water had curative properties and even washed the udders of cows with it to ensure productivity. In Hertfordshire, at sunrise on New Year’s Day, a hawthorn bush would be burned in the fields to ensure good luck and bountiful crops.
From the stories: Creaming the Well
January 6: Twelfth Night
Epiphany or Twelfth Night was the exciting climax of the Christmastide season, a time for putting away social norms. It was a feast day to mark the coming of the Magi, and as such was the traditional day for many to exchange gifts. Often decorations were taken down and burned by midnight on this day to prevent bad luck for the rest of the year. Some believed that for every branch that remained a goblin would appear.
Revels, masks and balls were the order of the day and night. Elaborate and expensive Twelfth day cakes covered with colored sugar and pastillage figures were served amid the parlor games and dancing, sometimes with very rowdy celebrations.
Sadly, the celebrations became so riotous that from 1860, Queen Victoria removed the traditional Twelfth Night festivities from the royal annual calendar as she considered them unchristian. She muted and stopped the traditional royal Twelfth Night celebrations, which had previously featured elaborate Twelfth Night cakes, bean-and-pea role-playing, and rowdy revelry. However, she continued to have private family Twelfth Night celebrations into the 1890’s.
From the stories: Darcy experiences at a Twelfth Night Ball here.
Continue Exploring Christmas Past
From Christmas puddings to kissing boughs and Twelfth Night Revels, the Regency holiday season offered considerably more than a single day of celebration.
Explore more festive foods, forgotten customs, and holiday entertainments.
Or follow your curiosity into…
Games and Frivolities
Discover how our ancestors made merry during the holidays.
Want to spend a little longer in Christmas past?
Discover the real traditions of the Regency holiday season in A Jane Austen Christmas, or join Elizabeth and Darcy for a festive visit to Pemberley in The Darcys’ First Christmas. After all, reading about a Regency Christmas is delightful. Spending one with the Darcys might be even better.
References
A Regency Christmas. Kieran Hazzard. 2013 2nd Bn. 95th Rifles
A Regency Primer on Christmastide & New Year’s. Kristen Koster. 2011.
Boxing Day. Jane Austen’s World. 2006
Celebrating the New Year. Johanna Waugh. 2008
Christmas, Regency Style. Regina Scott.
Christmas Traditions in Regency England. Regan Walker
Jane Austen and Christmas: Celebrating Twelfth Night
Jane Austen and Christmas : Decorating the Georgian Home
Tavistock Local History Society. 2016. “A Brief History of Twelfth Night.” https://www.tavistockhistory.co.uk/single-post/2017/08/01/a-brief-history-of-twelfth-night/
Young Queen Victoria. n.d. “Queen Victoria Revival: The Twelfth Night.” https://www.youngqueenvictoria.co.uk/queenvictoriarevivalthe-twelfth-night
I learned a bit more about Christmas time, twelfth night, and all the rest! So cool!
Again, thank for this knowledge, so pleasantly presented. I love the idea of Stir It Up Day. With every family member stirring, and the symbolicism in the way it is prepared and served!
interesting traditions
I liked the New Year’s Day tradition of the women running to the well and whoever drew water first would be married that year! Hopefully, the man she loved drank the water too!
Thanks for all the great information on the various dates. I forget what some of them are.
I love learning about the various dates
I bet there was a lot of work for hostesses for these events and their servants.
Always interesting to learn more about traditions, especially if it is of one’s ancestors. Some I have to smile at. My son now participates in a Polar Bear Dip in which money is earned for charity by persons who go in the water on New Year’s Day…and stay for a certain period.
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