"O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree"
This room shows a middle-class Victorian family drawing room of the 1850s. A family gathering is taking place in the evening of Christmas Day. The room is dominated by the Christmas tree, which the family have decorated with candles, toy instruments and animals, flags and baskets of sweets and beneath which the children's presents are placed.
It was during the reign of Queen Victoria that many of our Christmas customs first became widespread especially the practice of decorating a fir tree in the home. It is a popular misconception that Prince Albert, Victoria's consort, was the person who introduced the Christmas tree from Germany, however it probably came to this country around the end of the eighteenth century, but had been the practice in Germany since at least the sixteenth century. Queen Charlotte, the German wife of George III, may have been the first to introduce it to Britain for her young family during the 1780s and 1790s.
It was Prince Albert's enthusiasm for the custom, however, which popularized Christmas trees outside the Court circles. The royal family had a Christmas tree at Windsor every year after the couple's marriage which really popularized the custom, when illustrations of the tree, with five royal children standing with their parents and grandmother, were published.