A Gilded Age Christmas List

What a 19th-century Christmas list looked like (hint: fewer screens, more tin soldiers)

What a 19th-century Christmas list looked like (hint: fewer screens, more tin soldiers)

If you have a moment, please tap the heart button. THANK YOU! It helps others find my work. 💗 To join the conversation, consider upgrading your subscription today.

While Gilded Age Christmases, like those of today, revolved around cheerfully decorated trees, spiced fruit puddings, and hours spent catching up with loved (and tolerated) ones, it was also about gifts. Between the 1850s and the early 1900s, tokens of affection, duty, and aspiration were given and received in droves across Britain and the United States.

For the middle and upper classes especially, gift-giving was a performance in itself rather than a simple exchange – presents revealed more than a pretty curio when unwrapped, commenting on class, culture, fashion, and shifting social identities. Meanwhile, not a luxury the working classes could afford, the trinkets swapped amongst the proletariat instead told a story of practicality, lack, and often, fierce love between people with little to spare.

That’s to say that the holiday season was a perfect microcosm of the era itself: lavish for some, modest for many, and full of meanings hidden beneath bows, ribbons and brown paper parcels.