“Now comes the season of general cleaning, when all the corners and closets are overturned and hidden things are brought to light.”  --The Manufacturer and Builder (May 1872)

Spring cleaning was an important time for a Victorian household.  Approximately twice a year, Victorians would turn the house upside down in preparation for a thorough cleaning. They would begin at the top of the house and clean downwards.  The ladies of the house would remove everything from each room; wash the wainscoting with soft soap and water; pull down the beds and thoroughly cleanse all joints; scrub the floors; beat the feather beds; and purify every article of furniture before putting it back in its place.[1]

Such rigorous and thorough cleaning was necessary due to the filth caused by coal dust and ash, mud and manure tracked in from outside, and soot from oil and gas fixtures.[2]  New technologies may have contributed to creating dirt, but other technologies helped to alleviate it.  In 1876 Melville and Anna Bissell revolutionized mechanical sweeping machines with their own carpet sweeper.  Their non-electric machine swept the nation from the 1880s onwards.

Fortunately, the lady of the house was not expected to clean the entire house alone.  No doubt in smaller houses the mistress and maidservants could get by on their own, but for larger households it was recommended to hire at least three extra persons: “a white-washer, a scrubber, and a man to take charge of the carpets”[3] to help with the cleaning. 

There were many housekeeping books with helpful recipes for cleaning solutions and techniques.  Some such advice was as follows[4]:

In the general order of housecleaning, all the furniture was first removed from the room.  Next, all carpets were taken up and removed.  Walls were white-washed starting in the topmost rooms and moving downwards to the bottom floor, with the stair-case being done last.  Next, intrepid  ladies cleaned the paint and wainscoting on any walls which did not need to be white-washed.  For this, ladies needed  “two buckets of water, some hard soap, a flannel, a soft linen cloth, and some old, soft, linen towels.” [7]  These were used to gently wipe away any stains left on the walls by ill-bred suitors or unmannerly children.  To take off paint, soft soap, pearl-ash, sand, or a scrubbing brush were recommended.  With these implements, window frames, shutters, wainscoting and both sides of the doors were cleansed.  Windows were cleaned after taking down curtains or blinds and raising the sashes.  Ladies would then dash the glass with cold water from a tin much, though cautioned to look “out first, to see that no person is passing below.” [8]  Inside windows were washed with a luke-warm sponge and dried with a soft linen cloth.  Before refurnishing the sparkling rooms, chairs and furniture were scrubbed and sometimes even taken apart to be cleaned in pieces before reassembly.  Floors were scrubbed.  The kitchen, cellar, kitchen staircase and yard were the last to go.

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[1] Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management, Isabella Beeton (1861)

[2] Victorian America: transformations in everyday life, 1876-1915,  Thomas J. Schlereth

[3] The House Book : or, A Manual of Domestic Economy, Miss Eliza Leslie (1840)

[4] The Manufacturer and Builder, (1872)

[5] The House Book : or, A Manual of Domestic Economy, Miss Eliza Leslie (1840)

[6] The House Book : or, A Manual of Domestic Economy, Miss Eliza Leslie (1840)

[7] The House Book : or, A Manual of Domestic Economy, Miss Eliza Leslie (1840)

[8] The House Book : or, A Manual of Domestic Economy, Miss Eliza Leslie (1840)

Wild parties, staying up till midnight, drinking champagne.  These are the activities we associate with New Year’s.  But the Victorians did not particularly emphasize the New Year as a time for lavish parties.  New Year’s Eve celebrations as we know them were not in fashion until around WWI.  Instead,  for a brief period in the 1870s and 80s, particularly in New York, the popular custom was paying New Year’s Day calls.

Ladies would wait in their homes while gentlemen made the rounds to visit all of their acquaintances in one day.  Calls occurred between 10:00 AM and 9:00 PM.  Whether offering refreshments and small talk in their parlors or walking the streets of New York, New Year’s Day in the 19^th century was a day of Olympic socializing. 

The tradition dates back to the colonial period in the 17^th and 18^th centuries.  The New York region was heavily settled with Dutch immigrants and it is from this culture that New Year’s calling allegedly descended.  On New Year’s Day, groups of men would walk through the villages visiting each house and firing shots to celebrate another year gone by.  These revels became so rowdy there was even legislation passed in 1773 and 1785 attempting to stop the property damage that often ensued. 

By the 1800s, New Year’s calls had been refined from their rough beginnings to a high degree of social gentility.  There were many rules and restrictions regulating New Year’s calling. 

Ladies were advised: 

• It’s permissible to advertise in the newspapers where and when you will be available to receive callers. 

• Don’t issue personal invitations or you’ll appear desperate.

• Don’t put your address on your calling card.

• Your hair and appearance should be neat and tidy.

• Swinging on your chair is extremely ill-bred.

• Excess perfume should be avoided or people will suspect you’re a shop girl.

Gentlemen were advised:

• Do not call upon a lady with whom you are not acquainted.

• If you have a cane, keep it in your hand.

• Be careful not to make too much noise with your boots.

• Don’t ask what time it is; don’t check your watch.

• Avoid spitting on the floor¾do it in your handkerchief.

• Laying your hat on a bed is unpardonable!

The general procedure of a New Year’s Day call went as follows:  A lady, we shall call her Mrs. White, would advertise that she would be receiving calls in her home on New Year’s Day.  (If Mrs. White was not at home or was feeling indisposed, she would hang a basket on her front door for people to deposit cards in.)  A gentleman of her acquaintance, a family member, friend, etc. would come to call on foot or in a carriage.  We shall call him Mr. Smith.  Mr. Smith would give his card to Mrs. White’s servant.  With all the traffic on this day, this servant’s only job would be answering the door. While Mr. Smith waited in the drawing room, the servant would bear his card upstairs to Mrs. White in the reception-room.  During the visit, Mrs. White would offer her guest refreshments and would discuss light subjects like the weather.  Mr. Smith would only stay 15 minutes.

Ladies would lay out spreads of delicacies, coffee, chocolate, tea, and bouillon on side tables for callers to enjoy.[1]  However, a gentleman could not partake of these until his hostess invited him to do so.  Journals and magazines of the time advised ladies not to offer alcohol to their callers on New Year’s Day as such “dangerous stimulants” drunk in so many households in succession would make “it impossible for the caller to speak his mother tongue after he had made his calls.”[2]

What was witty conversation to the Victorians may sound silly to us now.  An etiquette book in 1887 advised ladies what to talk about during New Year’s calls.  The weather and good wishes for everyone’s health were safe topics.  One suggested conversation went like this,

            A gentleman complained of the mud in the streets.

            “Yes,” said the lady, “but it is very bright overhead.” 

“I am not going that way,” replied the gentleman.[3]

After 11 hours of walking the streets of New York and making small talk, he might indeed be heading towards the heavens.

New Year’s calls died out near the turn of the century.  By the 1890s, New York was becoming so big it was impossible to see everyone you knew in one day, and the practice fell out of fashion.  Despite the exercise and the etiquette, it is a pleasant idea: visiting all of your friends and loved ones to celebrate a new year coming in.   Though it may be through e-mail and Facebook and tweets, it is still true that “in a thousand homes, thousands of cordial hands will be extended on the great First of January, and to all of them we wish a Happy New Year.”[4]

The practice of decorating an evergreen  tree to celebrate the cycle of nature and rebirth is common to many cultures and goes back thousands of years.  Our modern tradition of the Christmas Tree stems from several ancient practices, and was crystallized in Victorian England.

Evergreen trees were a symbol to ancient Pagans of life renewing itself and the promise of coming spring.   The Celtic Druids used holly and mistletoe as symbols of eternal life, and placed evergreen branches over their doors to keep away evil spirits.  From the 11^th century, medieval villagers would put on “mystery plays” re-enacting scenes from
the Bible; one of the most popular being the “Paradise Play”.  This play depicted the story of Adam and Eve’s fall from Paradise.  To denote paradise, a fir tree was used as a prop, adorned with apples (the forbidden fruit) and wafers.  Later, the apples were replaced with shiny red balls, the ancestor of our modern Christmas ornaments, and candy and sweets were added.  The Church forbade the mystery plays during the 15^th century, feeling the performances had become too immoral.

By the 16^th century, Christmas trees were being erected in German guild halls—meeting places for associations of craftsmen.  These trees were decorated with sweets for apprentices and guild members’ children to enjoy.  One guild chronicle of 1570 describes a small tree decorated with apples, nuts, dates, pretzels, and paper flowers.  Soon this practice of decorating a tree for Christmas spread into the houses of upper-class Protestants as a counterpart to the Catholic nativity scenes.  Lighted wax candles as tree decorations  are attributed to the late 18th century.  There is a myth that Martin Luther, the 16^th century Protestant reformer, first added candles to a tree to simulate the stars twinkling in the heavens.

It was in the 1840s in England that the Christmas tree crystallized its place as the Christmas tradition we practice today.  Queen Victoria and Prince Albert combined their love of the Christmas tree and made it a central part of their Christmas celebration.  German-born Prince Albert brought the tradition of a Christmas tree to England, where it hadn’t yet been popularized, when he married Victoria.  The Queen herself remembered lighting Christmas trees as a child, writing in her journal of “two trees hung with lights and sugar ornaments. All the presents being placed round the trees..."  Prince Albert would decorate the trees himself with sweets, wax dolls, strings of almonds and raisins, and candles, which were lit on Christmas Eve for the distribution of presents, and relit on Christmas Day.   In December 1848, the Illustrated London News published an engraving of the Royal Family gathered around a Christmas tree.  This image, later reprinted in Godey’s magazine, cemented the Christmas tree as a symbol of the season.

In the 1850s, Charles Dickens described an English tree that was decorated with dolls, miniature furniture, tiny musical instruments, costume jewelry, toy guns and swords, and fruit and candy. In the Victorian period, Christmas trees were set onto a cloth-covered table with presents arranged beneath the tree.  The tree was ornamented with garlands, candies, apples, nuts, cookies, colored popcorn, and paper flowers.  Just as we cut paper chains and paper snowflakes today, young Victorian ladies spent hours making Christmas crafts.  They sewed little pouches for secret gifts, and paper baskets with sugared almonds in them.

Christmas activities for Victorians included feasting, making music, and playing games.  Small fireworks were burned and “exploding bon-bons”, or crackers, were pulled, spilling out small toys and trinkets. There were after-dinner singing sessions around the piano, ghost stories by the fire,  magic tricks, dancing, magic lantern shows, and parlor games.  One game was called snapdragon and involved piling raisins in a bowl of brandy, turning out the lights, setting fire to the brandy, and trying to snatch the raisins out of the bowl and eat them while they're still alight.  Shadow Buff was another game.  A sheet was suspended across a darkened room with a single candle on a table behind it.  One person would sit  in front of the sheet while everyone else passed between the sheet and the candle, and the person in front would guess who each of them was.

Charles Dickens, author of A Christmas Carol, advised in the 1850 Christmas issue of Household Words, “And I do come home at Christmas. We all do, or we all should. We all come home, or ought to come home, for a short holiday -- the longer, the better…to take, and give a rest. As to going a visiting, where can we not go, if we will, where have we not been, when we would, starting our fancy from our Christmas Tree!”

            Whether you celebrate the holidays with a Christmas tree, song, dance, exploding raisins, or otherwise, we wish you the merriest of Decembers and the happiest of New Years!