MICHELLE DOUGLASS: Hello and welcome to the National Trust

Podcast. I'm Michelle Douglass. Why do millions of us put up a

tree in our home and decorate it with sparkly bits in a strange

ritual marking the start of Christmas?

In this festive story, we'll be travelling to London in the

mid-1800s to discover how one eye-popping image of young

trendsetters Queen Victoria and Prince Albert went viral 19th

century style and sparked a Christmas tree trend in Britain

and beyond.

And a quick heads up if you're listening with kids around, this

episode briefly features some adult content.

It's the run-up to Christmas at Lacock Abbey in Wiltshire, a

medieval monastic-style building you might recognise from scenes

in the Harry Potter films.

The Lacock team are all hands on deck for the sizeable feat of

transforming the Abbey into an enchanted Christmas kingdom.

The centrepiece is the Christmas trees. They're putting up dozens

of little Christmas trees for the community festival in the

cloisters, two big trees in the Great Hall.

And finally, there's a huge 20-foot Christmas tree to hoist

up in the courtyard entrance.

The pressure is on to get the trees up, straight and

sparkling, before expectant visitors start arriving at 11am.

More than 85% of British homes put up a Christmas tree each

year. According to the British Christmas Tree Growers

Association.

We often look to the old and the new. Traditions from childhood,

new rituals from adulthood.

Perhaps you enjoy looking for future inspiration, like on

social media where there's no shortage of people filling our

feeds with ideas for festive flair for your tree.

But when it comes to historic influences, there's one couple

and one image that can be credited above everything else

for triggering the great Christmas tree trend.

CLARA WOOLFORD: Our Christmases would look very different if

this image hadn't have been circulated so widely.

I'm Clara Woolford and I am the property curator at Cragside in

Northumberland.

MICHELLE DOUGLASS: It's December 1848, The Illustrated London

News, the world's first illustrated weekly news

magazine, has issued a Christmas special featuring an eye-popping

printed picture.

It's an unusually intimate portrait of the young Queen

Victoria, her husband Prince Albert and their children,

decorating a new kind of festive centrepiece rarely seen by Brits

before.

An evergreen tree in their home?

CLARA WOOLFORD: The 1848 print is showing a beautifully

decorated Christmas tree.

You've got this gorgeous evergreen and it's lit with

candles.

On top of that are all of these little ornaments.

There's things like cradles and letters and puddings.

Some of these would have been handmade. They're all hanging

off of the tree. And then gathered around are the family.

Prince Albert and Queen Victoria are both very much enjoying a

family moment.

They're interacting with the children and it's a glimpse of

their family life that we wouldn't have had previously.

And they are, they're doing it really, really intentionally.

They're trying to set this idealistic portrayal of what the

perfect family setup should be.

And that is all tied into how you celebrate Christmas.

MICHELLE DOUGLASS: Before the 19th century, Christmas in

Britain looked very different.

CLARA WOOLFORD: There was a tradition in Britain and

actually across most of Europe, and it was called, which I

really like, it's called Christmasing.

So it's literally making your house ready for Christmas.

It's kind of mixed with a pagan tradition, celebrating the

natural world.

You would be bringing in greenery, very green, simple.

Totally different to when the Victorians start to bring in

some quite garish elements to their Christmas design.

MICHELLE DOUGLASS: Queen Victoria's husband, Prince

Albert, is credited with popularising Christmas trees in

Britain.

But the idea itself was nothing new. Albert had brought an old

ritual with him from his home country, Germany.

CLARA WOOLFORD: Christmas trees are German tradition.

There's definitely this long, long history of bringing

Evergreens into homes in Germany around that festive period.

Really comes to England with Queen Charlotte. So she is the

German wife of George III.

And in 1800, she brings a yew branch into Windsor Castle and

decorates it with candles.

It becomes quite a firmly established tradition in the

upper classes of Britain. So it's not something that

everybody is doing.

MICHELLE DOUGLASS: But why did a single image of Queen Victoria,

Prince Albert and their Christmas tree cause such a

stir?

No super influencer or celebrity royal family member today could

hope to touch the influence that the couple Victoria and Albert

had in the mid 1800s.

CLARA WOOLFORD: Previously, the royal family were quite

disconnected. What changes is that Queen Victoria and Prince

Albert especially, he really drives this, are very conscious

of their image.

MICHELLE DOUGLASS: Victoria and Albert were a different kind of

royal.

They helped to style a constitutional monarchy. The

role was more separated from politics, and instead they

focused on becoming patrons of charities and institutions and

making civic visits.

And they used their domestic life, a solid marriage that

produced nine children, to create an idealised personal

image too.

CLARA WOOLFORD: They have a kind of personal interest in

presenting their family as the kind of ideal husband and wife

with their children, the kind of family that they want to

encourage their subjects to be.

MICHELLE DOUGLASS: They may have been appearance conscious, but

Victoria and Albert's private passion for each other was

authentic.

CLARA WOOLFORD: They did have a real genuine relationship. Her

diaries are full of references to basically how gorgeous she

thinks Albert is.

They're married in 1840 and she does write about not getting a

lot of sleep on her wedding night.

And they're having so many children. She's constantly

pregnant. She's constantly moaning about being pregnant

because she feels that that impacts their sex lives and

that's very important to her.

They know they're young and attractive and popular. They

know that they have this Victorian idea of all these

children, but they definitely publicise it as well.

MICHELLE DOUGLASS: In the 1800s, the Industrial Revolution's new

technology had brought with it the dawn of the mass media.

People hungrily devoured the new wave of up-to-the-moment

newspapers and lifestyle magazines illustrated with

eye-catching images that jumped out of the text.

Victoria and Albert used this media revolution to position

themselves as 19th century mega-influencers.

CLARA WOOLFORD: How they managed to create this mass influence is

that they're using mass media. So newspapers are really

prevalent during this period.

We suddenly get a proliferation of illustrated papers as well.

So there's the London Illustrated News, the Graphic,

but everybody has access to them in a way that wasn't previously

there.

They're in lending libraries, people are reading in pubs. You

have five different editions of the same paper in one day.

People are consuming mass media in a way that's quite

recognisable to us.

Victoria and Albert are trendsetters. People are

following what she's wearing, what is he reading, where are

they visiting, people copying that lifestyle.

MICHELLE DOUGLASS: Against the backdrop of Victoria and

Albert's popularity with the British public, and the new age

of mass media, printer J. L. Williams creates his 1848 wood

engraving image of the young royal family decorating their

Christmas tree.

CLARA WOOLFORD: The wood engraving, which is also

beautifully coloured as well, so it's a really rich image. It

appears in print in its black and white form in the London

Illustrated News, but it also becomes a kind of big, splashy

front pager of celebrating Christmas at home with the

royals.

And it has a huge impact. So suddenly the middle classes,

anyone that can afford to aspire to this kind of ideal is doing

so.

So they're starting to bring in trees, the little handmade

decorations or things that were being bought between the

couples.

So Albert and Victoria bought each other Christmas decorations

that had special meanings to them.

That sort of tradition was also copied, but then you've got the

mass market and the mass industrialisation of the 19th

century where you can suddenly buy Christmas ornaments.

MICHELLE DOUGLASS: One of the key and quite alarming

decorations was to create a starry light effect using real

candles tied to the tree with ribbons, what could possibly go

wrong?

One newspaper talks of a lucky escape. "Panic at a Workhouse"

writes the coventry evening telegraph in 1891.

A lighted candle fell from the tree and ignited the toys and

wool. The children ran out screaming. Beyond the loss of

the toys and the partial burning of the tree, no damage was done.

CLARA WOOLFORD: They have looser health and safety concerns, I

think, than us.

MICHELLE DOUGLASS: Middle class people in Britain could now

afford to have a royal German tradition in their homes.

And trees began appearing in public places like town squares,

as well as being donated in places in need of cheer, like

workhouses.

As well as taking off in Britain, the US got the

Christmas tree bug too.

A version of the image of the royal family and their tree made

it into the influential monthly publication Godey's Lady's Book,

and the fashion for Christmas trees was set.

One American businessman recognised the potential for the

market for Christmas tree baubles.

Round glass baubles originated from the German mountain village

of Lauscha.

The American businessman first imported artisanal baubles from

Germany and later more cheaply mass-produced ones.

The trinkets were extremely popular with customers and at

Christmas stores were transformed to show them off.

You may have heard of the businessman who helped bring

Christmas baubles to the mass market, if you can remember a

certain high street shop. His name was Mr. Frank Woolworth.

The way we celebrate Christmas today is largely thanks to the

Victorians.

CLARA WOOLFORD: The Victorians Really invented our modern

Christmas.

Things that we think about as being quintessentially Christmas

items, like the Christmas card. The Christmas cracker was

invented in the 1860s by Thomas Smith. The paper chain that

comes over from Germany in the 1850s. So all these things that

we kind of associate.

Charles Dickens'Christmas Carol really solidifies that because

he captures those traditions and kind of makes a sort of cult of

Christmas with the Victorians as well. They get so into it.

All those kind of trends and copying each other. And it

certainly sets the tone for our Christmases.

MICHELLE DOUGLASS: At Lacock Abbey, it's 11 o'clock. The

Christmas trees are up, adorned and sparkling.

Visitors begin arriving. And the magical midwinter sight puts

smiles of delight on people across the generations.

So why has the Christmas tree remained so prevailingly

popular?

CLARA WOOLFORD: It's sheer size. You're bringing a tree into your

house and it's the focal point for gift giving, for gathering

around it.

You know, you were encouraged to gather around your tree and sing

carols and admire it. I guess it marks the occasion.

That image, I think is- still resonates with us. You know, the

kind of prioritisation of families and Christmas being

something that's celebrated in your home.

It's still very much the big thing is, you know, "when are

you going to put your tree up?"

MICHELLE DOUGLASS: Thank you for listening to this Christmas

episode of the National Trust Podcast. You can see the UK's

tallest Christmas tree, a whopping 42-metre giant redwood

at Cragside in Northumberland.

And there are many other places around the country to see

enchanting Christmas tree displays at the National Trust.

We'll be back in the new year, and I'm excited to share in

Spring 2025 we'll be changing the National Trust Podcast to

bring you more immersive stories in nature, history and

adventure.

Stay on this stream for our new nature podcast, The Wild World

Of, and look out for our new history podcast, Back When.

We'll keep you up to date on the changes here on this channel.

From all of us on the National Trust Podcast, a Merry

Christmas, or however you choose to spend the festive season, and

a very happy new year.